Once every 50 years snow storm coverage continues

Dec 21.
Yesterday was quite a misadventure. We left the building at 7am and headed to the airport. Portland got freezing rain overnight so there is a sheet of ice over snow. At the bus stop we and a few other riders were harassed by a homeless woman. She was yelling "You crazy people going to work on Sunday at this hour? Your are all slave to drug." Then sang Chestnut roasting on an open fire with a lot of expletives inserted. Tough to be homeless in this weather.
We got on the bus then connect on the Blue line MAX and got off at Gateway stop. The Red line to the airport is closed because the track switch frozed. We got off and waited for a shuttle, it was really cold with some serious wind blowing out of the George. There were 3 buses there and they wouldn't go to the airport. These are "warming bus" for people to stay warm on. jeezzz... We waited for 30 minutes and finally the airport shuttle showed up. Everyone rushed the bus, the driver has a Russian accent and eventually he yelled - "no more, next bus for you." We got on though.
We got to the airport and all morning flights was canceled and we waited in line to try to get on another flight. I got through on the cell phone somehow so we rebooked the flight 2 days later on Tuesday. Hopefully the weather cleared by then. We got the ticket from the machine so we were able to go inside the terminal and get lunch at Laurelwood Brewing company. Trudge home...

Dec 22.
Woke up to a flurry of snow. Michelle finally gets her snow day, but she already took vacation. Oh well, bad timing, the story of Michelle's life. 8) Joe decided to make the best of it and try snowboarding.


The Pettygrove park next to our building.


Our favorite photo spot. The snow is fluffy and about a foot deep.

Wheeee..... the whole 5 seconds of it. I thought I would never say this, but too much powder. There is not enough slope so once I get down to the foot of the little hill, that's it. It was really had to put the binding on too, I'm pretty rusty.

Joe's 1st snow angel. yea!! On the side of our building. I was thinking "hope there are no yellow snow under here." There are a lot of dogs in our building.
Looks more like a Swiss Chalet than Portland in this snow.

The corner of First and Harrison is very treaturous today. Two buses got stuck and blocked the street car. I guess we're not going anywhere else today.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow flight.
Happy Holidays!!!

Arctic Blast 2008 continues!

It has been cold for the whole week, very unusual for Portland. It's Saturday and it is snowing pretty good. Our flight to LA is tomorrow morning so hopefully the airport will be open.

We went to the library and it was closed, but we dropped the dvd in the drop box.

The Dreamer looks great in the snow.



Michelle
Us with the Portland sign.
The Christmas tree

A street car got stuck in front of our building. It was a just a little slope.

The Tri Met guys are still deicing the track a few hours later.


Internet is not good, hopefully we make it out of Portland tomorrow.

Winter Storm 2008!!!

Portland had been very cold this week. We got good snow on Sunday, it was really nice (watching from inside.) It stopped snowing on Monday and I went to work via the MAX. The temperature was still very cold and very windy so I really hated it when I had to wait for the MAX/streetcar/bus. These pictures were from Sunday.

View from the bedroom at around 9am, it was snowing pretty hard.

The street car was running.
Traffic got worse and the day went by. The ramp to the Marquam bridge was really slick and people had a lot of problems getting up the slope. A truck was stuck for a long time and kept spinning his wheel. The TV helicopter was out filming and we saw it on TV and from the living room window.

After lunch, we went out to take some pictures. The snow had let up a bit and already melted a little. Michelle made meatloaf last night so we had a yummy meat loaf sandwich. Michelle at our favorite photo spot - Pettygrove park right downstair.


Joe at one of the little hills in Pettygrove park.
Joe making a snowball. The snow was dry and fluffy so it didn't stick together real well.

Anyway, it's a Wednesday and I called in a snow day today. It took it's time, but it started snowing around 10:30am and will be bad driving today so I stayed home. It is snowing a lot more in Hillsboro near Intel so I'm glad I didn't go to work.

Seattle road trip

I listened to The Killers new CD and wanted to go to see them in concert, but they were only going to play in Seattle. So I go ahead and got tickets and tried not to think too much about the drive. We went to H&M, a clothing store in Seattle, but we didn't buy anything. Then went to have Chinese food. Michelle wanted Beijing duck so we ordered it. The duck was just a regular BBQ duck, man what a rip off!!! Anyway, the salt pepper squid was good. Then went to the show after dinner, it was a great show.

Death Cab For Cuties - they were ok, not that great.

The Killers were awesome, they played a bunch of great songs from all their albums.

Excellent show.


We got lucky and got out of the parking structure very quickly. I thought ahead and parked near the exit. Also remembered to park backed in, backing out into the crowd and cars trying to get out would have been a pain. 8)
Finally got home at 2am, whew, we are getting too old for this.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone,
We just stayed home the whole day and didn't go anywhere. The Portland zoo had a free day and we were thinking about going to see the new baby elephant, but it's too cold. We've seen baby elephants before anyway, and we could pet them in Chiangmai. 8)
Michelle made a great Thanksgiving meal today. No turkey though. We got green beans, yams, mushroom risotto, rack of lamb and Oregon pinot noir. We got the rack of lamb from Trader Joe's and it was really good, juicy and yummy. We took a big nap afterward and just kick back, didn't make it to the zoo.

November

It's November already, the weather is getting cooler and wetter. We are mostly staying in town on the weekends now since it's difficult to drive in the rain.
We still have a few nice days left. This is early November.
Pill Hill - Oregon Health Science University, VA hospital, and other hospitals. The leaves are turning read and gold all over, very nice.We went for a walk at the waterfront park. Here we are at the downtown marina. The Portland beach is in the background there, it's pretty rocky.

The Hawthorn bridge is getting an examination. Convention center in the background.

This is the middle of November after 10 days of crazy rain and gray sky. Beautiful view of Mount Hood at dawn.




We went to get some food. Michelle got a nice veggie/fruit sandwich from Half & Half, a granola crunchy coffee shop that plays obnoxious music. I got a Thai green curry fried rice from I Love Thai Food cart.

Another food cart - a Korean Bento shop. This cart used to be a Corn on the Cob cart from LA. The Korean ladies just painted Korean BBQ line at the top and added corn on the cob to their menu. They sell yummy Kalbi and Bibimbop.

While we're waiting for the Street car to come home, we saw this window at Knit Purl a knitting/fabric shop. All the "food" were made from wool. i liked the carrots, neat.

When we got home, the view is still awesome!!!

Happy November. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, I'll take an extra day off to relax a bit.
bye for now

Michelle's new glasses

Michelle's turn to update her image - Vote for your favorite. :)
She tried frameless glasses, but we decided it's just too naked. She didn't like the thick frames either so let's see what we can do.
CLICK the pictures to zoom in.

#1 - kind of neat, a little too sharp on the points.

#2 - oooofff... not good... I can see why she doesn't like thick frames....
#3 - too bling blingy
#4 - this one is not bad, she didn't like the thick legs though.
#5 - another bling bling glasses. kind of cute actually, but probably not good for work, too cutesy.
#6 - this one is really too cutesy and Michelle doesn't do cutesy.
#7 ding ding ding, I think we got a winner here. It's got a nice dark red metallic color that didn't really show up on camera. She'll probably get this one.

Well, what do you think???

Joe's new glasses

I just got my new glasses, check it out! Like it?
Pettygrove Park
The leaves are turning in Oregon. We found a nice maple near the Keller fountain.
We went to the glasses store to make an appointment for Michelle and then we went to pick up some lunch afterward. This Indian food cart is right around the corner from our building. I got Lamb Vindaloo and Michelle got Saag (spinach.) yummm....


King of Rice. They are closed today, but I heard they are really good. We'll have to try them on a weekday. Ignore the mess on the floor, I didn't do it. :)

Michelle with some falling leaves near the court house.
More Michelle.


Check out my Nike. ooohhh.. a lot of colors. Too bad they are not comfortable. I got some padding from Target, but it didn't help much. I probably have to give these to Goodwill soon. Stupid shoes...

To be continue...
Michelle tried a bunch of new glasses at the store, I'll post the pictures and let you vote next time. :)

Bagby Hot Spring

Today we went to Baby Hot Spring. We left at 8:30am to get there early. Bagby is in the Mount Hood national forest. The drive there was fantastic. We went along the Clackamas river and saw great mountain and river views. We got there around 10:30am and got started on the hike to the hot spring.
The bridge at the trail head.

Michelle
Another cool foot bridge.

Ahhh!!! The pay off. We got there around 11 and got us a private tub and cubby, yeah! This place is really busy in the summer, that's why we wanted to get here early. This is a long log tub, it's really awesome. The tub is about 10-12 feet long. I want one at home.

Here is the water system. The hot water comes from the spring and you just have to plug the drain hole and then pull the stick that plug the in coming hot water. I had to get 4 buckets of cold water to mix with the hot water.
We're done at noon. You can see a few people at the waiting area. This hut has 5 private cubby and a public area. The public area has a big round tub (5 people) and 3 log tubs (2 people.) This hot spring is clothing optional so that's why we wanted to get a private cubby. Of course the public area only had guys. We stopped at Safeway to get some granola bars when we left earlier.

Here is the hot spring. You can see it go from the spring down to a wooden aquaduct to the tubs.

big log

Refreshed and it's time to go - 1.5 miles hike back to the car.


All in all a great trip.