Matthew in Oregon, 2011

Matthew arrived and almost immediately wanted the race track set up as it had been the last time he visited.

 He also wanted to work with tools in the greenhouse.

First we built a bird house

which we mounted on the barn.

Then he wanted to build a pirate ship

which we managed with scraps from around the ranch

and a few brass items from Robnett's.

Matthew was old enough this year to ride the three-wheeler by himself.  He took his first rounds in the yard

but was soon pushing for running into the pasture where he almost got lost in the tall grass.

Grandma Deb made cupcakes which Matthew frosted.

Some of the frosting actually made it onto the cakes.

Eventually the weather warmed enough to swim.

As an aside, Bogie never gets in the water.  In fact, he hates getting his feet wet.

This, a dog who has lived his entire life in Oregon.

At an estate sale, we found an Indonesian style boat kite,

 

so of course we had to drive to the coast to fly it.

We were invited to Daniel's Bar Mitzvah so we all dressed up for the festivities.  Matthew looked grown up in his new duds.

We bought fireworks, Oregon legal, of course, not like Alabama's, and started burning them early.

We set some off in the backyard.

On the evening of the Fourth, we drove to the riverfront and with the crowd watched the JC's fireworks,

went home and fired some more.

On Matthew's birthday, he ordered enough sushi at Aomatsu to last three days.

The Rudels gave Matthew a radio controlled ATV

 and after dark, we shot off the canon and lit more fireworks.  There's a special treat to have a birthday near the Fourth.

We went to the Philomath Frolic rodeo but did not manage to take the one photo that Matthew wanted to prove to his dad that clowns do not have a red circle on their butts to attract bulls.

We did, however, manage a couple of interesting shots.

Debbie Rudel brought her equipment and gave Matthew a backyard clip.

After, he looked like a new man.

With Shelley and two of her granddaughters we drove to McMinnville to Evergreen Wings and Waves Waterpark.

A 747 with four waterslides, a wave pool, smaller pools, waterfalls, and other attractions kept us entertained all day,

with the slides grabbing most of the attention:

a hike up flights of stairs, a wild ride down winding tubes,

a swirl round the drain,

then splash down.

On July 13, we got up at 2 a.m., drove to PDX and Matthew flew out at 5:30, anxious to return home.  On our drive back to the ranch, we decided to see if we could get into the famous Voodoo Donuts to get breakfast.  In the past, every time we've driven by, the line to the door stretched around the block and sometimes farther.  At 6 on a Wednesday morning, however, there was only one customer and there was parking right in front.  Alas, although their signature donut looks like fun, it looks better than it eats--IMHO--as the kids text.

Matthew would have loved it.

Music at the beach

Friday, March 4, about noon, Deb learned that friends planned to see BB King at Chinook Winds that evening and that if we could find tickets, we could go together and eat at the buffet before the show.  Deb went to the web site, which said the show was sold out--easy to believe--but she phoned and the lady at the casino said there were seats left at one table.  Deb grabbed them, called me, and we were on our way.  The buffet, $30 for two, all you could eat, was good, lots of seafood on a Friday, and afterward we found our seats in the theater at a narrow table for eight, perpendicular to the stage, some 40 feet away.

At 8 exactly, the band came out, played a set, and then stage hands brought a chair stage center, and between two handlers making sure he didn't stumble, out walked the master himself, BB King.

The chair was for him.  He made a point several times, when he was ribbing ladies in the front rows, that he was 85 years old.

He talked as much as he played or sang, a patter easy to listen to, but when he played or sang, age was not a factor.

At 9:30, he stopped playing and offered to sign souvenirs.  We left our seats and moved closer--Deb reached the front and snagged three plastic BB King lapel pins, one of which she gave to our friends.

BB signed a few things handed to him, then was helped to his feet, put on a long coat and a hat, and was helped off the stage.

Oregon Spring, 2011

Crocuses were blooming all over, daffodils blooming here and there, pussy willow were starting.  Then Thursday morning, February 24, snow started.  By 6, trees and road were covered,

 the truck mastiff was peeking out.

Snow kept falling.

By 8, the ranch looked like any northern site.

The snow fell so gently it stuck to fence wires, twigs,

the reflector by the mail box,

sheep,

weathervane.

Bogie really enjoyed the Oregon spring weather.

Year of the Rabbit 4709

Chinese New Year celebrations start with the new moon, this year February 4, and end on the full moon 15 days later, so on Friday, the 18th, Deb and I and two friends drove to Wong's King in Portland for a nine course banquet, lichee martinis, and Martin Yan's cooking show.  Deb was afraid they would run out of his most recent book so she bought one early and prevailed upon Yan to sign it.

At the head table, a cook carved melons, beets, and turnips into flowers.  We hors d'oeurved on veggie rolls and pork shumai--Deb's favorite--she scarfed 10.

 

Entertainment started with fire crackers beyond the windows in the parking lot, then moved inside with the lion dance.

For his cooking show, Yan carved meat and vegetables into impossibly thin slices, joking that such skills allowed Chinese families to live on very little, then boned and sliced a chicken in less than 18 seconds.  He drafted two men from the audience to cook the food, then served it to the tables they came from.

Our dinner started with Four Happiness Cold Cut Platter--veggies on dry ice--and continued with a seafood soup arranged as a yin yang sign, followed by Pearl Stuffed Angel Wings, Lucky Thai Chicken, and yum, lobster tail over yam noodles.

The most dramatic dish was served with the lights dimmed: Flaming Braised Diced Steak.

The next three courses seemed anticlimactic: cod fillets, noodles, and assorted pastries.  Dinner ended with cooks parading to applause.

 Martin Yan and the chief chefs visited tables for photo ops.

People born under the sign of the rabbit enjoy learning about other cultures and other peoples but are most comfortable at home.  For us, that meant a long ride.

Winter Storm

I read in the paper that January winds of some 50 miles per hour─mild as winter winds go on the coast─at Waldport had buried houses on the sandspit on the north side of the Alsea river estuary where in the 80s and 90s speculators built houses on top of dunes and called them Bayshore Estates.  Thursday, the 20th, a pleasant sunny day, we drove over to see for ourselves, parked the Audi on Oceania Drive, and walked.

  The city had plowed the road to a nice level surface, but left owners to extract their own houses.

Some had already made progress─

we could see where sand had reached the attic windows─but many had not yet started.


 We walked up to a few to get a closer look

and walked around to the ocean side which took the brunt of the wind.

Drifts reached the eaves of many of the one-story houses.

We found workers starting to extricate a few of the buildings.

 The beach looked cleaner─more windswept─than we remembered from our hike last year when we photographed sea lions lounging in the sun.

Grass that stabilized the sand had been scoured down to nubs and dunes were almost free of tracks.

We talked with a couple also sightseeing and the man reminisced about his youth in Minnesota when he skied from his barn roof down snow drifts that looked just like these.  (International Falls that week saw the temperature drop to minus 46 degrees Fahrenheit.) At Bayshore Estates, where sun won't melt drifts, owners pay $2,000 to $3,000 each year to remove sand.  To give an idea of the problems they face, I copied a photo from the Waldport Chamber of Commerce website (http://www.waldport.org/).

In the photo, Bayshore Estates lies just beyond the bridge, the Pacific Ocean is just beyond the sandspit.

In the years we've been visiting the coast, we've watched developments grow up─the sandspit here, one at Siletz Bay, among others─and often wondered how bankers could fund such construction.  Not only do they have the good Matthew's warning against building on sand, they have the example of Bayocean on Tillamook Spit, a development started a hundred years ago that at its height reached a population of some 2,000, the population of Waldport in 2009.  In less than 50 years, the sand and sea had taken everything.

The housing bust of 2008 revealed how the banks had funded this project: they wrote the paper for financing and collected fees for doing it, then sold the mortgages to accumulators who bundled the paper and resold them to speculators; the bankers did not care that the houses were constructed on sand as they no longer had a financial interest.  An additional irony is that buyers didn't care either: many purchasers were speculators.  Most of the houses on Oceania Drive are vacation rentals; many are for sale in the half million dollar range.  Bankers made money, contractors made money, realtors made money, even buyers made money.  For $99 to $500, you can spend a night on Oceania Drive listening to the crash of waves a few feet down and a hundred yards away.

Don't plan on a storm surge or a Tsunami, however.