Tag Archives: Hood River

Oct6

Finding a home in Hood River – a backlogged story

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Final Week of June, 27 & 28-June-2015

This is a post that I wrote right after moving to Hood River, while I was still moving into my new apartment.  It got lost in the stack of blog posts, so please enjoy this snippit of life in Hood River!

So, interesting thing. Hood River is not an easy place to find a house.

It’s a tourist town, is the first piece of information that’s key to this. The total year-round population is something along the lines of 7,200 residents… slightly different than the millions of people living in the greater Boston area year round. Granted, there are roughly 30,000 tourists in town at any given time during the summer…

So that’s when I found myself looking for a new, long-term lease. In the middle of tourist season, when everything is rented out, and costs are at a premium.

Not a good time to be looking. But I couldn’t help it, so I jumped right in as soon as I was settled into my short-term rental.

I asked around; talking to everyone in town who would listen.

I looked at the classified ads in the local papers, and I hunted down an online forum specific to Hood River.

I checked Craigslist, trying to sift through the spam and the dregs for something worth while.

I even visited a few real estate agents… and that’s when I realized one specific difference about the Pacific Northwest…

See… in New England, everyone works. All the time. It’s basically the point of life: to put in long hours, and then complain about it afterward.

Comcast has service calls every day of the week, and schedules them until late in the evening. Restaurants close at 01:00, and auto body shops open up at 6:30. Real estate agents show up to work every once in a while, and actually respond to phone calls.

That last bit is critical: I visited six agents, left voicemails for all of them, and even left physical notes for a couple. I bugged their secretaries, and stopped in during my lunch break multiple times.

“Ohh, sorry, they haven’t come in yet.” – I was told, at 10:00

“Oops, they’re out to lunch, just left” – I heard, at 12:15

“I’m so sorry, they just went home for the day!” – They mentioned, at 16:30

Seriously. Their work days seem to be 11:00 to 3:00, with a two hour lunch break in the middle.

Anyways. Craigslist held true for me. In Boston, I’ve gotten good places via CL. I’ve gotten furniture, sold furniture, and gotten jobs. In Hood River, I got an apartment.

I ended up looking at two places: A condo, and a small house. The house was bigger, and closer to the office – easy walking distance. It was also on a steep hill – the driveway would be murder come the ice and snow. But I’d be walking everywhere, so who cares? The condo was smaller and a little bit further out – biking distance, easily. And while it was at the top of the Hood River hill, the parking lot itself was nice and flat. And since it’s a condo, it would be plowed.

I ended up with the Condo – I kind of wanted the house, to be honest, but the owners were having nothing to do with my rugged good looks… and by that I mean that they thought I looked like a dirty hippy who wouldn’t be able to pay his bills. But I was okay with that – while the house was larger and had a yard / fireplace, it was also larger… which meant more furniture that I’d need to buy, and more space that I’d need to pay to heat.

In the end, things work out. I signed the lease two days before my Airbnb rental ended, and was able to get a bed and furniture delivered before I even moved in.

Sep1

My birthday weekend! The fourth weekend that I’m in Hood River, Oregon, and the West Coast! — Sunday

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My birthday weekend! The fourth weekend that I’m in Hood River, Oregon, and the West Coast! — Sunday

Sunday, 12-July-2015

My actual birthday! And for some reason I don’t go climbing on my birthday. Instead, we wake up, make breakfast, and head toward a trail called Salmon River, down south from Mt. Hood.
Why we picked it… I couldn’t really say – Brian and I had looked through a ton of possible hikes, but for some reason this hike stood out. It had a neat name, a good length, and was a pleasant drive away.

So, we filled up our packs and jumped in the car! But, instead of heading right to the hike, we decide to put the wrong address in the GPS, and get lost along the way. Because we’re cool like that.

And then once we get there, we notice a small sign mentioning that you can’t buy a parking pass at the trailhead. Instead, you have to head back into town and buy a parking pass. So… we crankily drove back into town. But we bought coffee and donuts, and it was ‘kay.

The hike itself? It was actually really pleasant. It followed a river, for the most part, and was nicely Jurassic. That’s a term now, by the way. Means when a hike transports you back to the age of the dinosaurs; the huge ferns, tall trees, and velociraptors hiding in every patch of shadow.

I mean, that last part is an assumption on my part. But I’m pretty sure it’s true.

But so we walked. We talked. We passed a few other groups of people exploring. I don’t know what else to say. Hikes are not really very good for talking about… One of the reasons that I want to read/watch that movie “Wild”… I seriously can’t see what could hold an audience for that long.

Then we got to a small slab of rock alongside the trail. With rock climbers! But we didn’t have any gear. So we just watched and cheered them on for a few minutes, before moseying on our way, deeper into the prehistoric jungle.

We even stopped to skip stones, before turning back and heading home. On the way we did stop into a “snow pulloff” thing on the Mt. Hood approach, where we bouldered around for a bit, and I even gave Brian the chance to practice driving a manual transmission car, even though I thought I’d learned my lesson when I let his brother stall the poor Mustang out half a dozen times in the Jordan’s Furniture parking lot…

But Brian did ok, and the car survived another day. Long enough to get us back to Hood River, where we had a delicious dinner at the Mesquitery and excellent wine at… a place… with wine? I don’t remember the name. But it was tasty.

Aug31

My birthday weekend! The fourth weekend that I’m in Hood River, Oregon, and the West Coast! — Saturday: Ribs and climbing

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My birthday weekend! The fourth weekend that I’m in Hood River, Oregon, and the West Coast! — Saturday: Ribs and climbing

Saturday, 11-July-2015

Waking up happens! Then heading for Breakfast!

Yes, it was a capital “B” for Breakfast, since it was pretty large and definitely excellent. We hit up a not-so-small place right by my house that I’d been eyeing since I first started moving… it labeled itself as a pancake house, and I was curious exactly what that meant, in regards to delicious breakfasts…

Turns out – it means that they have excellent pancakes. I know, I know… I should have known. But I don’t like assuming things until I have empirical evidence. And that evidence took the form of three monstrous pancakes covered in bacon and strawberry jam.

That’s right. Bacon pancakes with strawberry jam. And that’s not even counting Brian’s omlette-with-three-pancakes meal.

The car’s already packed, so we roll out to Horsethief Butte, the climbing spot that I’ve been scouting out earlier in the week. And since Brian is around, we don’t need to stick to the short climbs anymore – my trad rack is on my harness and Brian is giving me a belay almost as soon as we get there, and we’re exploring the routes…

ROCK CLIMBING!

  • What I’m calling “the entrance arrete” – 5.9/5.10, trad, Ben leads… partially. I finished up the first section, but after that it got a little too committing for me – so I lowered off, and we walked around to build an anchor. Then proceeded to crush it on top rope.
  • Middle Canyon routes – 5.easy, maybe as high as 5.6? All on trad, with Ben leading. These are fun routes, though no real technical difficulty. A few spicy moves make it fun, and the gear placements are definitely enjoyable. It sort of reminds me of Hammond Pond, back in Boston. The climbs are clean and solid, and there’s a ton of variants that can be done.

We climb ’till a little after noon hits, and then head back toward Hood to start the ribs cooking. We stick to my old-school recipe, and sauce them up before tossing them into the oven.

And now… we wait. But waiting is boring, so we head into town and explore a bit. Checking out the wind surfers and kite boarders, jumping in the water… you know, the usual. Because everywhere has huge populations of kite boarders, right?

The goal of the evening is hosting a dinner party – not a big one, but a small one for myself, Brian, and the folks who’d hosted me at the Airbnb rental when I first came to Hood River. We’d gotten along quite well, and so they’d made me promise to keep in touch as I got settled into town. I figured that a birthday dinner party would be ideal, and an especially good chance to show off my cooking skills!

So… I show off my cooking skillz. Everyone shows up around 7:00, and we relax and eat and chat and have a good time. The drink of the night is a Moscow Mule, which somehow goes super well with Ribs and cornbread and veggies. And Alexandra brings along raspberry tart, which is completely amazing and disappears quite quickly.

The rest of the night is chilling – chatting some more ’till they head out, then Brian and I light a fire out in the pit out back, and sip beers and poke fires ’till we get bored.