St. Helens

This Sunday I plan to ascend to the rim of Mt. St. Helens with a friend of mine. After taking in the view for awhile, I plan to strap on the Snowboard for the descent back down. The weather should be perfect high freezing levels and clear skies. I will be sure to post pictures.

I have climbed Mt. St. Helens many times in the past this will be the first time that I will be bringing a board. Not any board though. This is a split board. Basically take a normal snowboard and cut it in half lengthwise add a special adapter for my bindings that allow it to either be set in the normal snow boarding position or in a parallel position similar to Nordic skiing. The board itself is attached together by tip and tail levers that lock the board together for riding and unhook out of the way when “skinning”.  The “skins” are strip of material that is used on the split board to offer traction during tour mode. Skins have a velvet-like feel that easily slides in one direction (uphill) and grabs in the opposite direction (downhill). If I can get the hang of the Nordic style of skiing technique it should be snap or I will end up booting it.

Check back next week for a trip report.

Monotonix

I am not going to write about last nights Monotonix show at the Wonder Ballroom because it was crazier then bat shit on rye bread. Nope. I am because I have zippo to do at work today and I at least like to look busy. Monotonix is an Israeli band from Tel Aviv The trio reminded me of typical 70’s rock bands with the long hair and larger stache’s.

 

I can’t quite reconstruct everything accurately as it happened so quick. Monotonix does not use the stage they just set-up on the floor. About one minute into their first song the guitarist plowed down both fence dividers that separated the all ages crowd (all 5 of them)  and the over 21 crowd and fell down right in front of me knocking down a lady next to me. I helped the guitarist back up to his feet then helped the chick who never let go of her Pabst that was now mangled and the contents foaming out all over her clothes. Turning back around to the front of the stage (on the floor) I had a massive bass drum coming right at me crowd surfing style. The bass drum was re-situated in the over 21 area with the guitar player now also keeping the beat. Meanwhile the singer was busy hugging people, pulling his shorts into his butt crack and knocking down the dividers. I couldn’t decide what to watch the band or the staff/security trying to keep the dividers standing up as soon as they got it back up they would knock it down again. The next song the entire drum kit was slid around towards the middle of the room. Other highlights include someone grabbing a full 55 gallon garbage can from the bar and dumping it on the band or the further re-location of the drum kit up in balcony with the singer jumping off the balcony into the crowd for a finale. 

 

The Silver Jews headlined the show so I stuck around for a few songs not really getting into them so I bailed. All I can say is a tobaccoburst SG just looks weird and why an SG would be selected for this slow a tempo of music?

Oba!

I took my amazing and lovely wife to Oba! for her birthday last Friday. Oba! is a restaurant in the Pearl District that features great Caribbean/Cuban cuisine and even better Mojitos and Cucumber martinis we put in our drink order with the waiter and started going over the menu in detail as I promptly set my menu on fire. While unaware of said fire I was notified by the guests at the table next to us as “Hey your menu is on fire.” I thanked her graciously and calmly tried to blow it out but the waxy coating of the paper and my blowing on it only fueled it into a small inferno. This situation required water and fast so I began the process rolling the now fully engulfed menu so it would fit into my water glass but just then the waiter arrived with our drinks and serenely asked that I please place the burning menu on his tray. Not wanting to disobey him even though I would have had it doused in my water glass I put it on his serving tray and off he went. He came back a short time later to gave me a new menu and relit the candle which was the one thing I was able to blow out. After all the excitement died down I was able to dive into the wine list searching for something that would go with our dinner selections. I narrowed it down to a short list of wines from Spain and with guidance from the waiter I selected a 2004 Navarra Alzania 21 del 10 which was fantastic. I must find this wine and buy a case.

We ordered two tapas the Spanish cheese plate and the Chipotle calamari both very tasty. For our dinner entrees I chose the Cuban pulled flank steak and Christine got the Butternut squash Enchiladas both were tasty although we switched plate’s midway way through and ended up liking each others entrées better.

Over desert we chatted up with a fine drunk gentleman next to us from Barbados who said he worked for the United Nations and was in Portland for work and was looking for some of Portland’s other “nightlife” activities. To Christine’s delight I was able to rattle off a handful of titty bars within a short cab ride from downtown. As it turned out though he was looking for places with more shall we say “intimate contact”. As we paid our bill one of his other dining companions obviously seeking an opportunity to leave got up and gathered her stuff and whispered to me to take good care of him tonight. As if we would shuttle him around. Riiight… I gave him a name I saw in a Mercury advertisement once and wished him good luck and he left to presumably go find a cab who would know how to get there.

We left shortly after and since we were stuffed to the gills we decided to go for a walk around the area and found Jamison Square were we sat on a bench for awhile people watching trying to decide if the other folks there could actually afford to live in this high priced area.

Even if you hate the Pearl District and what it has become there are some great restaurants and I would put Oba! in your must try list.

Berry Picking

Last Sunday afternoon we drove up to Sauvie Island to get some fresh raspberries and enjoy the scenery. Our first stop was Kruger’s farm. They only had a couple of pints left of picked raspberries but had U-pick. No thanks I will gladly pay more not to have to pick berries. (I picked a lot of berries as a child) I did buy three pints of there Kotata; basically a Marionberry but cultivated to better handle the cold. Leaving Kruger’s we headed North on the island to explore the other farms in the area. We stopped briefly at this crazy guys Lavender farm and showed Eli his chickens and sheep while briefly gazing at his lavender. I wanted to ask him about this little statue of a chicken with no head next to the chicken house but I knew we would get suckered into buying some lavender from him so we just left. The next stop was Columbia Farms which was once a large dairy operation now a large berry and vegetable farm. Of course they also were out of picked raspberries. We reluctantly decided to go pick our own as it was getting late in the day and the odds of anywhere else having any already picked was slim to none. I don’t think I have picked a flat of berries since I was a teenager on the farm.

"This is a hoot"

"Do I look Like I am having fun?"

Yep, picking berries still sucks but the reward of fresh berry cobbler or shortcake makes it all worthwhile. Here is the cobbler my lovely wife made out of the blackberries. Awesome.

Now I am getting a hankering for my mom’s blackberry dumplings. They are freaking awesome.

Teresa, Give Me That Knife!

So you can eat with metal silverware after security now at least at PDX. The Laurelwood even has them for the grabbing near the door. But if you were to try and go through security with say a knife and a fork in your carry-on they would more then likely take you away somewhere and question you for an hour possibly missing your flight. I don’t see a threat from these items anyway since most anyone would jump someone trying to takeover the plane. Just an observation from my last business trip...

Local Grubs

We went over to the Portland Farmers market this past weekend to A. enjoy the day and B. get some grub for dinner. If you haven’t been I highly recommend going if you like fresh grub. The market was already bustling and it was still just the end of April.

The first thing we spotted was rhubarb my request for strawberry rhubarb pie was immediately placed with the chief pie maker. The salad makin’s looked wonderful with fresh arugula, mesculn, spinach etc. but we still had store bought organic salad to use up so we moved on. We did buy some brie from a local cheese maker in Scio, OR., bread from the Pearl bakery, and grass fed rib eye steaks from Deck Family Farm out of Junction City, OR.

The menu for dinner went like this:

Organic salad with blue cheese dressing
Bruschetta with white bean spread
Roasted Red Potatoes in garlic cloves and EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
Ribeye steak with cabernet sauce
Amavi Cabernet-sauvignon from Walla Walla Valley ‘05
Strawberry rhubarb pie and vanilla ice cream.

Here is a couple of pic.

The Steaks.

The Cabernet Sauce

The Pie.

Over dinner the conversation moved to the discussion of the difference in grass fed beef vs. grain fed which was better tasting and so on. I knew that grass fed was better for you because they area eating grass duh. And feedlot cattle are not very healthy due to there close quarters to each other, large amounts of antibiotics, etc.

Whenever I travel to the Midwest everyone always brags to me about grain fed, dry aging, marbling etc. but I didn’t know if grass fed beef has/could develop the flavors from being grain fed so some research was in order. I found this link that offers somewhat of a comparison between grain vs pasture raised beef.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/food/beef/index2.html

Pretty interesting check it out.

Beer Movie

Among the long list of documentaries my wife and I have been watching lately, the latest is “American Beer ”. This was moderately interesting to watch but only if you truly love craft beers. This documentary is about a group of six guys that go on a road trip to see 38 brewpubs in 40 days. For me the main appeal with this film was the great interviews they got from the brewers/owners who threw their nuts on the dashboard and mashed the throttle to make a go at starting a microbrewery before the brewpub/craft brewing craze really got started. The exception would be the interview with the RedHook founder he was kind of a dick. There beer has gone to pot anyway since their partial sellout to AB. The 6 guys (really only 5 since the 6th was doing the filming) didn’t bring a lot to the table but was still watchable. Their selection of breweries was pretty good with the likes of Pelican, Dogfish, Anchor Steam etc. until the next to the last stop at New Belgium. Whaaa?! I cannot stand New Belgium. The beers I have tried just don’t do anything for me. The Fat Tire Amber just seems a little light in the malt area. Of course I tend to compare all ambers against Full Sail Amber in color and body. But honestly it is not the taste that bothers me as much as their graphics on the bottle. Something about it just irritates me I don’t know what it is. Could it be there successful marketing that Fat Tire is available almost everywhere? I’m sure they have plenty of beers at the brewpub that are great but I would have a hard time trying them after Fat Tire. Anyway I digress back to the movie. These guys who in my opinion spent too much time boozing on the east coast try a little too hard to be funny and made only a few stops in Oregon and one or two in Washington. I was hoping they would have hit some of my favorites although lesser known say New Old Lompoc, Roots Brewing, Lucky Lab or even Tugboat Brewing as one of the smallest brewpubs in Portland. Oh well.