Tag Archives: Hood River

Aug30

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

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Friday, 10-July-2015

This one goes in as a simple bullet post – Friday’s are always fun, but they’re never really the highlight of the adventure… you know?

  • Work is good! I actually get to run an engine for the first time – it’s not as insane as one would think, but it’s definitely loud.
    Short story: I was standing behind the propeller, doing the main engine start. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to tell when the engine actually kicked in and was running on its own… until I actually felt the engine go. Yeah… I am now quite confident that this thing can launch a plane through the sky at break-neck speeds. I won’t say that I got knocked backwards… but my shirt definitely turned into a sail until I stepped out of the engine wash.
  • Anyways, so I left the office later than I’d planned. But I drive fast, and I-84 is beautiful, so it was all good. Soon enough I was easing into the parking spot in Washington Park of Portland, right by the international rose garden to meet Brian.
    That’s right – Brian Bostwick, who had flown out to Portland on a whim, to help me make ribs and have adventures on my Birthday.
  • So we met up… after way too much “where are you?” “I’m here, where are you?” “I’m walking there now!” “No damnit now I’m there!” Stooges-esque shenanigans. And then we headed into Portland proper, aiming for one of the things that I love most about Oregon – the sheer number of brew houses.
  • We chose Rogue, the brewery of the famous Dead Guy Ale. Everything on the menu looked good, but Rogue had the best burger that I could think of – A ½lb burger, with bacon and cheese, topped with pulled pork.
    And of course, they had Rogue ale. Which was kind of an excellent part.
  • So we ate, drank, and made merry – catching up and hanging out and chowing down before the drive home.
  • And you know how, usually, drives home are shorter than the drive out? Not so much, this time. Too much food makes for a tired Ben, which makes for a long drive.
    Thankfully Brian kept me talking and conscious, an soon enough I was giving a tour of the house. And with the tour done, and the couch pulled out into a surprisingly cushy bed, we crashed.
  • And by “crashed” I mean “grabbed beers and stayed awake” – though I admit that we did hit sleepland way earlier than I expected. Downsides of flying lots, and Brian still being on Eastern Standard Time.
  • We do take the time before bed to prep the ribs though – cooking Baby Back Ribs isn’t actually all that difficult, but it takes prep work head of time.
Aug29

Exploring the rock climbing of Hood River – Horsethief Butte

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Exploring the rock climbing of Hood River – Horsethief Butte

Various points during the week between 06-July & 10-July

Day 1

I love climbing.

Yeah, I know. Huge surprise. Hush.

But now that I’m in a new town, I’ve got to explore the area! I had an entire new landscape to adventure in – I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest, much less climbed all the fun stuff it had to offer. And the Columbia River Gorge is beautiful – with huge soaring cliffs every few miles.

I needed to climb some of those cliffs.

So I looked up routes on Mountain Project, and found the closest solid crag that I could – a place called Horsethief Butte, about a 20min drive from my new house. So, even though it was right around sunset, I hopped in the car and headed toward the butte.

And… I’d left too late – by the time I got there, it was too dark to really think about climbing. So instead, I pulled my headlamp out of my pack and headed in to do a quick recon run of the area.

First thing: The view of Mt. Hood is amazing from Horsethief – It’s a solitary peark, so it stands out beautifully from the rest of the landscape. And since I’m on the Northern side, there’s still snow on the peak, which makes it just that much more picturesque.

But, since there wasn’t any climbing to be had, I didn’t stay too long. Just a quick exploration in prep for the next day…

Day 2

This time, I left the house almost as soon as I got home from work. Just left enough time to have a quick snack and grab my climbing gear.

And this time, I hiked in with a crash pad on my back… Which normally doesn’t really make much of a difference. But the Columbia River Gorge is windy. And a crash pad is, at it’s heart, a large piece of foam. Which acts like a sail.

Basically, I just mean that the hike in was kind of more interesting than I expected.

As far as climbing goes? It was fun – there’s a ton of climbing to be done at Horsethief; the problems ranged from easily done to “wait… what?” levels of difficulty. I enjoyed it; I don’t know the sames of any of the routes, so I couldn’t comment on difficulty or anything. But I enjoyed it, and that’s what matters.

Even got home in time that dinner wasn’t even too late.

Aug26

My first weekend in Hood River – Day 2!

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My first weekend in Hood River – Day 2!

Sunday, 21-June-2015

I’m stressed this morning… I sleep way too late, and it takes me a while to actually rouse myself out of bed even after I’m awake. I had a few stress dreams last night, so I guess the move (and my imminent first day of work) are starting to get to me finally.

But thankfully, the conscious version of Ben knows the solution to all of that. So once I get control back from the unconscious version of Ben (that guy is so lazy… he just sleeps all the time…) I head into the yoga room and spend a while just working out. Simple stuff, but the pushups and squats and yoga clear my head enough for me to really focus down and get the day started.

And that start is basically just getting life ready for my return to the world of employment. It’s:

  • An oil change for the car; which turns into a full service stop, with $300.00 worth of fluids, belts, and other various bits getting replaced.
  • Walking around town, finding myself a new work notebook, since I gave my last one (which was full of steam jet designs and optimization strategies) back to my old boss when I left Artisan Industries.
  • Eating a BLT at a coffee shop in town. Because I can’t get the rest of everything done if I don’t have a belly full of bacon and coffee.
  • Grabbing various snacks for my breakfasts for the week, in case I can’t find anything solid to make otherwise.
  • Doing a pre-drive out to the office where I’ll have orientation, so I know where I’m going and roughly how long it will take – My standard rule is to drive the route the night before, and then triple that time to accommodate for being not fully awake, and traffic.
  • A stop at the car wash, to clean the dust and grime and bugs off the Mustang. The poor thing’s been like this for thousands of miles, and deserves a good soak.

With my chores done, I headed back to the house to relax for a bit, and get some early sleep. Ohh wait, never mind. I wanted to download The Martian, the book about the Mechanical Engineer / Botanist stranded on Mars. So… I do. Then I don’t fall asleep anytime soon, because it’s a really good book, and I can’t put it down…

But that’s fine. Reading is a good way to combat stress too – so while I stay up later than I should, I still fall asleep roughly on time.