And so begins our journey to Kansas. Today marks day one for travel. This past weekend was filled with packing, loading, visiting with friends, cleaning, packing, goodbyes to friends, loading and some more cleaning. Follwed up with a six hour drive and we’ve made it to Onterior, OR. Staying at the Motel 6 with the two pups and cat… and we’re completely exhausted.
Leaving Portland today was hard… but not impossible. It’s a pretty bitter sweet experience leaving. Lots to miss, but so much to look forward to. Commencement. Here’s to the next chapter!
So. I’m attaching some photos for fun and stuff but getting delirious, so no more typy typie.
Well we’re mostly moved out of 9300 N Burr, and close to settled into 46th Ave. Here’s the progress of the move out.
9300 moving out progess
Would have larger images, but my phone crashed before I got the images off… anyway, more to come later.
I can’t be believe how long it’s been since my last post. Nearly a month! I honestly couldn’t say if it’s been because I’ve been that busy or that boring for the past month. So, here I’ll try a little recap.
First off, this past weekend Laura and I signed a lease for a new place here in Portland. We’ll be moving at the end of October. We’re pretty excited about having a new location, but will definitely be sad to leave this house and of course our awesome landlord Erin. This house has really been awesome to live in and it still amazes me how much we lucked out finding it on craigslist. So why are we leaving?
Reason #1, because this neighborhood sucks. I’m sorry to all the die hard St John’s lovers out there, but I’ve gotta be honest here. St John’s has a lot of good qualities and it’s totally improving all the time, but as of right now it kind of sucks to live here. It’s a little on the ghetto side, and were Laura and I are right now, it’s kind of on the edge of the ghetto side of the ghetto. Then there was the “we got robbed” factor. It’s far as hell from anything exciting going on. We’re 4 miles from a decent grocery store. And for working from home and wanting to get out during the day once in a while, there’s nothing to do around here. There are about 2 coffee shops, one of which is never open. To sum up, St John’s is not why we moved to Portland.
Reason #2 is that we want to explore the city while we’re here. I think even if we loved it here in St John’s it would be good for us to move around a bit to get to know Portland better. If we’re here, I want to be here and experience this place to the fullest. We’ve done North Portland, now it’s time for Northeast Portland, and after that maybe Southeast, who knows.
And of course Reason #3, is we’re kind of getting a sweet deal. Kind of. We’re moving to a really nice place in a really really nice part of town (at least compared to our current location). It’s right around the corner from coffee shops and restaurants, which will be awesome for me working from home. The house a little bigger, nice yard, and a garage. No landlord living downstairs — although, we haven’t had much to complain about having a landlord living downstairs here. This place is just going to be a better fit. It’s much more in line with what we wanted to move here for.
The downside of course is that it’s more expensive. Fortunately though, part of our deal is first that it’s “month to month”… basically if bills are getting tight, we have the option to give a 60 day notice and get out of our lease early. 60 days is a lot, but at least it’s there. So it’s more expensive, but pretty well priced for what we’re getting, and there’s a lot more flexibility. Of course we have a ton of flexibility now, but we just need to get out of this neighborhood.
It’s such an odd feeling moving. We’re both really excited for our new place for so many reasons; and we’re so excited to get out of St John’s for so many reasons; but we’re really going to miss this house for so many reasons. It’s just a really great house, in a not so awesome neighborhood. And I don’t say that just because of the robbery. There’s sirens often, cars speeding down the street, meth dealers in the house across the street — exaggeration Mom. It’s just not a sweet place to live. But this house, this house is awesome. We’ll miss it.
I’m sure there’ll be more on the move in later posts. I just need to make sure I’m making posts. 
BTW: I’m really exhausted as I’m writing this, so if there are a ton of typos or if it just plain doesn’t make sense, my apologies.
I just got word that Artcrank is coming to Portland this year — October 1, 2009.
For those of you unfamiliar with Artcrank, it’s “a Poster Show for Bike People”. The show, hosted by One On One Bike Studio, began in Minneapolis in 2007 and has now spread to Denver, Portland, San Francisco, and St Louis.
Here’s a glimpse of the 2008 show — music by Keston and Westdal:
This past weekend, my friends Wes, Mason and Amy came out for a visit in Portland. It was awesome having them around and getting a chance to show them Portland and the Oregon Coast. The only downside to the whole trip was that it was only four days long. They got in on Wednesday and we tried to keep it simple night. Hung out at the house for a bit and then met some friends out at the Leisure Club here in St. John’s. It was a good night, but we did get a little rowdy. Towards the end of the night we met a couple who live here in St. John’s who invited us over for a bond fire. We accepted and were able to give the gang a little extra Portland flavor by mixing with the locals. For Thursday and Friday we headed out to the coast which was really the bulk of the trip. The weather was the best I’ve seen on the coast since we moved out here. Absolutely perfect.
Dan & Wes at Canon Beach
Amy, Mason, Dan & Wes at Canon Beach
Outlook Point
Outlook of Manzanita
Oregon Coast
Mason on the Trike
Our final day was quite exhausting. We’d gotten ourselves a trike from Toys R Us a couple of days prior and decided to give it a test run. Mason Wes and I headed out with the trike on a bike trailer to Mt Tabor Park, which is basically the highest point in Portland. I didn’t know until after the fact, but I guess it’s actually an active volcano. Hauling the trike out was quite a chore, but well worth it. No one got seriously injured although Mason took quite the digger on the bike ride home. We were all pretty exhausted by the end of it.
The trip was concluded with a trip downtown with dinner at the Montage and a night cap at Huber’s. By Sunday morning we were all pretty wiped out but still sad to see each other go. Miss those guys a lot. I get to see them again in a couple of weeks though, which brings a smile to my face.
This is the bike ride we went on today. Too tired to write more right now…
…now able to write:
So yesterday we went on a pretty amazing ride. When I really think about it I think it’s one of the longest bike rides I’ve been on in my life, at least that I’ve recorded. We were planning on going for a long ride but were thinking the route we chose would me more like 30 miles. Turns out the round trip came out to close to 40.
There’s a route that goes around Portland called the 40 Mile Loop. Based on the map it looks more like a series of trails that surround Portland, so you could do the 40 mile loop a number of different ways, and I’m pretty sure that there are a few loops that would be far more than 40 miles (considering what we did yesterday).
With the Loop in mind, it seemed like a good general destination was SE Portland (the opposite corner from where we live). There seemed to be a few good parks in that are so we chose one (Powell Butte Nature Park) and decided to go for it. We didn’t really know anything about the part, just wanted a goal. Turned out on our ride out we noticed signs for the Leach Botanical Gardens and decided to go there instead (about half a mile shy of Powell Butte). As it turned out the Botanical Gardens weren’t quite as awesome as we were expecting. I guess by the description of Botanical and Garden we were expecting clusters of flowers. I don’t think we saw a single flower in the whole place. It really just a forest with a stream running through it and trails running all around. However, there were a few really cool buildings along the trails that were entirely made of stone. Laura’s first response was that they looked Hansel-and-Gretal-ish, which was very true. It was interesting to think about when and why someone would have built them in the first place and if anyone ever lived there.
We’d packed a nice lunch with some fruit and sandwiches. Once refueled we were on our way again after our short stroll through the “Gardens” and some quick stretches. The next 12 miles or so were pretty brutal.
It seems that the second half of any journey is always harder. Like climbing into a tall tree and then realizing, “how the hell am I going to get down from here?” I think it’s partially the physical exhaustion but I also think a lot of it is mental. Once you’ve accomplished the goal you were working for you just want to be done and that makes you feel even more exhausted. So how do you rectify such a thing? Make another goal. We decided to set our sites on a place to have dinner and a few drinks to help relax after our haul. We ended up at the Tin Shed, a place just outside of our hood that we’ve frequented a bit. And after are tummies were full once again, and we had a slight buzz for the remaining 5-6 mile ride home, we were off.
Might take a second or two to load…
View Portland, Sunday, May 17, 2009 in a larger map
Once home, we were both incredibly exhausted. We each wanted to other to massage us for a good hour or two, but neither of us had the energy. We’re still feeling sore and a bit cranky because of it. My ass still hurts as I’m sitting on our comfy couch. But it felt great to have the ride that we did. I hope we start doing rides like that every weekend.
Balck Walnut
So we’re building a coffee table. We’ve been needing a coffee table for some time now. We’ve talked about building one for a while but haven’t really looked too much into it because of costs. Instead we’ve been keeping our eyes open at garage sales and antique stores with no luck… until this weekend. We stopped into a small antique-type furniture store while scouring the city for garage sales and found this amazing wood coffee table that was damn near exactly what we’ve been looking for. Only problem? Too expensive. So in true Dan and Laura fashion this spawned a whole new quest for the day without really discussing or giving much thought to the idea: let’s build a table. Not like it’s a bad idea, but before we knew it we were searching around for lumber yards all over town and trying to get the wood of our coffee table dreams within a reasonable price.
The Inspiration
We have a basic design in mind and have a pretty damn good idea of how we’re going to build the table, but finding the correct lumber turned out to be more difficult than we’d anticipated. We called a few friends and did some searching around online and found a few places that looked like promising candidates for lumber. The first place was The Rebuilding Center, a truly awesome and true to Portland form warehouse with tons and tons of old used lumber. Mostly doors and window frames, but also a hole lot of 2x4s and spare lumber everywhere. This is where we got our legs. We had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for, which were some thick 6×6 pieces of hardwood to make the legs from. Luckily we were able to find some more moderately priced pieces that will work quite well. I’m not exactly sure what kind of wood it is, but we’re thinking Cedar. The important part is that they’ll make great big heavy legs for our table.
(bottom-left) 4' and 3' 6x6 Legs
(top-right) 2x14 slabs for the top of the table
Today was the real big treat though. Laura found this place online that’s just outside of the city in the burbs. This guy built his own wood kiln and has been collecting lumber from all around Portland and selling it out of his house. He’ll find someone (on Craig’s List for instance) trying to get rid of an old tree somewhere around town, send his guys to collect the wood and then mill it, air dry it in his back yard, and finally “cook” it in his kiln for three months to fully dry out the wood and then prepare and sell it off to folks like us. He had a ton of really gorgeous wood there. Probably more impressive that there were so many more natural cuts of wood there. Most of it was like a cross section of the tree. Really neat guy.
We told him what were were doing and around the sizes we were looking for and he found three pieces that were really perfect for us. The wood had a bit of a twist in it so he planed them for us as well as he could — there’s a slight twist in the boards yet; hopefully we’ll be able to get away with not having to correct them. He also gave us a bunch of tips and ideas for finishes. And the pieces of wood he gave us are really spectacular. I really think it’s going to add that extra piece of character that’ll turn this project from something fun and something we like, to something we truly love. I’ve still have to make a trip to the hardware store to get some tools and hardware to put the thing together, but the important stuff is in our hands, which feels great. The table’s going to be a real beast when were done with it. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if all the wood weighed 80-100 lbs. As a reference, the leg with the red paint in the picture is about 48″ tall. It’s really going to be a beautiful project and we’re pretty damn excited to get working on it.
Well this past weekend was damn near perfect, which has been very well deserved by Laura and I as we’ve been putting in some pretty excessive hours over the past few weeks. This was the first weekend in a while that we didn’t have to work and all, and the weather gods must have had us in their favor. The weekend was filled with blue skies and temps high 60s, low 70s. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
So what did we do with our free weekend? Biked. Here’s the route.
I had a few errands I’d wanted to run around town and so we hoped on our bikes and started the journey. We decided o start out with some fuel and went to the Little Red Bicycle which is this amazing neighborhood cafe about a mile from our house. They’re only only until 2pm and closed on Mondays, which I constantly want to scold them about, but they make some of the best damn sandwiches on the planet. Fried egg with caramelized onions on ciabatta? Hells yeah. So we got some deats and headed out for the long haul. I’d wanted to get to this bike shop in South Portland to get a new rear wheel so I could gear one of my bikes; Portland has a lot more hills than Minneapolis. We decided to go the route of Willamette which is always an awesome view and winded down Greeley Ave, past Adidas (which is a really ugly building) proceeded by a HUGE hill that was quite a bit of fun to ride down.
This part of the ride I think really sums up what I love about Portland. The roads we were on were really quite large roads, with on ramps to the highway (which we had to cross over) and times really almost felt like we were riding on the shoulder of a four lane highway. The whole time we were in our bike lane and felt no danger from traffic what-so-ever. I think it’s truly commendable how much the city pays attention to bicyclists and makes them feel safe throughout the city. In Minneapolis it’s a lot easier to feel like a nuance to drivers that are obviously more important than god. Long story short, you can bike damn near ANYWHERE in Portland and you’re welcomed. Cars stop and let you pass before they make a right hand turn. People are just more considerate.
Steel Bridge from the floating dock
From our massive hill and highway we came across the riverfront and road along this floating dock on the opposite side of downtown Portland from the Willamette. The eeriest part was that we hadn’t realized we were floating at all until we were about halfway down the dock. It’s basically this boardwalk that runs along the river about 40ft from the coast. It was pretty damn beautiful.
And on we went to City Bikes. There are actually two “City Bikes”, one with the sub-name of Annex. I was looking for a used bike parts story and wasn’t quite sure which one was which, so we stopped at both. I’m pretty sure it’s the same shop with two locations. I think City Bikes Annex is the spoiled little sister, and City Bikes is the ugly older brother. We were looking of for the ugly brother.
New Wheel from City Bikes
The Annex was nice though. They had a cool upstairs with a bunch of used bikes. Saw an old tandem that was about the same as the one I have from home that needs rebuilding. Thinking about buying the one they had for the parts or see if I can make a deal for the parts I need. It’s a really crappy tandem either way, but pretty sure they only wanted $200 for it. Anyway… made it to the right shop and scored a new rear wheel and cassette. The cassette was really nice, but super dirty. Just caked with mud and grime, but about an hour on Sunday later and it was spit shined to perfection. And away we went.
Our next stop was at this great park that Laura knew of in the area, Laurelhurst Park. Apparently it was designed by the same guy that designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park. It was pretty sweet. We walked through the part with it’s lines of furs and lake and plopped down for rest and so I had a change to return a phone call to my mom.
Continuing on we stopped on our way to Mississippi Ave at this super awesome little bar on Failing and Williams called the 5th Quadrant. Played some Connect Four, which Laura totally kicked my ass at, had a couple drinks and some food, and continued on our way. Most of the rest of the trip was just our ride home. All in all, we started biking around 1pm and didn’t get back home until about 7pm. In my mind a damn near perfect day. That evening we biked to a friends house for a bond fire and had pretty relaxed day on Sunday that started out with home made pancakes. It was an awesome weekend.
So I was finally able to get the pictures from our trip up on Picasa. There’s an entire album there called “The Oregon Trail” with mostly pictures from Montana. Here are a few favorites:
We drove into a number of beautiful sunsets on our way out west.
Ray was the best Yellowstone guide in all Montana.
Ray and Laura in Yellowstone.
So much contrast in one place.
It's called Yellowstone for a reason.
We saw four elk just as big as this one, all in the same place.
There were litterally heards and heards of bison throughout Yellowstone.
Driving back to Ray's.
Ray and Judy's place was really fantastic.
Driving through the mountains makes ten hours go by really fast. I highly recommend it.
What I'm doing right now, in our new home in Portland.