Blogger Recognition Award

Claudia from Do What You Love was kind enough to nominate me for the Blogger Recognition Award, which carries with it a certain set of responsibilities that I will endeavor to satisfy below.

A 1972 vintage, perhaps?

I’m up for pizza pretty much whenever, but what pulled me into Olde Line in Lincoln City, Oregon, wasn’t just that it seemed like a good idea for lunch.

It was the sign that said “vintage bowling.”

As a child of the upstate New York bowling culture of the 1980s, I had to see what that meant. Were there manual scorecards, or if they wanted to go really old-school, human pinsetters?

Suzi just wondered if the vintage bowling also made me vintage, and joked that if I was, maybe it would make me popular with the hipsters.

Oregon Adventures: Time to go

On our final night in Oregon, Dancehall Days performed a concert basically behind the patio of our hotel room.

If there’s a song you’ve liked in the past 25 years, or any Fleetwood Mac song, they probably played it.

Because reality always insists on breaking up the fantasy, we’re headed back home to Massachusetts. If you missed anything I wrote about the trip, or want to read it again, here you go.

Oregon Adventures: The final stop

We’re at a resort where a golf course is behind our room — although a giant tree doesn’t help the view — and it’s a short walk to the Pacific Ocean.

All in all, it’s not a bad place to end a vacation.

Oregon Adventures: The wonder of Crater Lake

No matter where you’re coming from, it is a long drive to get up the mountain to Crater Lake.

And it is a long drive to get down the mountain from Crater Lake, no matter where you’re headed.

Yet hundreds of thousands of people make the trek every year — even as snow still closes areas of the park in June and small earthquakes are a reminder that the lake itself was created by a collapsing volcano.

Oregon Adventures: Something isn’t quite right

I am occasionally the suspicious type, and a fairly low-grade conspiracy theorist.

And having spent about a day-and-a-half in Bend, Oregon, something is really tripping my wires.

Oregon Adventures: There are no rules

Suzi and I have a thing we do sometimes called “If I were following the rules … .”

Usually, it’s when we’re on vacation or away from work for some reason, and we think of what we’d be doing if we were there.

I started to ponder it as we were walking around the Oregon State campus in Corvallis, thinking three hours ahead and my usual schedule for the day when Suzi chimed in with …

… “You’d be on vacation.”

Oregon Adventures: Taking me out to a ballgame

While my friends and family back east were sleeping, the Giants beat the Dodgers 3-2 in Los Angeles. More than 42,000 people were at Dodger Stadium.

Giants-Dodgers is one of the game’s great rivalries, regardless of the standings. I had the good fortune to attend one of their games a few years ago in San Francisco.

A wee bit north, 922 miles to be exact, the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes lost 12-7 to the Spokane Indians. Last season, they averaged 1,897 fans per game, at the bottom of the Northwest League. Their 2,473 average so far this year is an improvement.

But that’s where we were, because baseball is baseball.

Oregon Adventures: A surprise on the second day

Our plans for the day were to start with the International Rose Test Garden before heading down into Portland.

We weren’t planning on going to Pittock Mansion, but after we found out it supposedly had the best views of Portland, we decided to check it out, since it was just a short drive away.

And once we were there, we decided we might as well see the mansion.

Oregon Adventures: Greetings off an airplane wing

After close to six hours flying over Canada from Boston, our plane made the left turn, down through Washington and into Oregon.

As we were descending toward Portland, maybe about 13,000 feet up there it was … a mountain just off the wing.

Friends of mine thought it might have been Mount Hood, but regardless, that’s a pretty good welcome.