Movie Wrap Up

I saw 2 movies on the big screen this week:

Batman: The Dark Knight - I really enjoyed it. I saw it on an IMAX screen, right up close and that made it all the more engrossing. I would highly recommend it, there's been a shift from the original campy comic book feel from the movies with Micheal Keaton to a dark plot driven and action driven story about heroism and the baser mentality of people. I thought Heath Ledger was an awesome Joker, really creepy!

FLOW (For Love of Water) - A documentary on the world water crisis. Visiting numerous towns and villages around the globe we were shown how water is becoming a commodity that is increasingly controlled by large multinationals who aim to profitize the water supply/distribution in regions were people can't afford the water and will continue drinking water from polluted rivers and streams. Other issues are the displacement of people with dam development and the other problems associated with dams - algal growth and methane production (methane is a greenhouse gas). Closer to home, Nestle, CocaCola, Pepsi who sell bottled water often go into a community and develop a large well that draws so much water from the aquifer that streams dry up, sink holes form, and other people's wells dry up.

This movie was shown at the Hollywood Theater as a benefit for Engineers Without Borders. I haven't heard how much money it brought in for projects, but the theater was full and a bunch of raffle tickets were sold - so I'm sure the goal was acheived.

Flex Nuts

The weekend before the 4th went camping a couple of weeks back with Brandon, Andrew, Gabe, Michelle, Danielle, Sabrina, Laura, and TQ. It was very cool weekend at Beverly Beach. We started early and stopped at Camp 18 for huge, huge breakfast.

We also stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. That was fun. Danielle took some great photos!
Beverly Beach

After camp was set up, we started right off with some Absynthe. Then onto vodka.












That night Andrew and some others went and took some cool photos on the beach.

















Saturday:
I went on a hike with Laura and TQ to the Yaquina Bay lighthouse and met up with the group at the Rogue Brewery Public House. We got back to camp and hung out, then I cut up pre-cooked sausage, Gabe did the potatoes and onions, for Hobo stew. Hobo stew is a bunch of sausage, potato, onions, carrots, and a little bit of butter wrapped up in a tinfoil pouch and put on the fire for about 20 minutes. They turned out really good. Brandon did up some yams or sweet potatoes in tinfoil on the coals which were awesome too.

Why is this post titled "Flex Nuts," well Andrew has got me onto Lil' Wayne and one of the things he says in one of his raps is flex nuts. Flex nuts is what the camp cop did when he came into our campsite at 11:45 pm asking to see the leader of the group. Brandon came out of the tent and answered all of his questions, handed over her driver's license and waited up while the real cop was supposed to come back and give an official fine of $100. He told us he gave the first warning by just driving by and that he has a second option, he can evict us from camp. He was trying to flex nuts and thats not cool.

Well, no fine has been sent to Brandon yet and its been two weeks so its not too likely to happen now.
AC's Photos

This embedded video from Youtube is sort of how it was like driving back home. Isn't Will Arnett hilarious?!

Dirty Half 08 - Better than last time

After training for about 7 weeks I ran the Dirty Half Marathon on June 8th, 2008. This is a 13.1 mile course on single track in Bend, Oregon. I ran it last year at 2:00:00 and this year at 1:57:00, that's about 15 seconds better per mile than previous, I think my time was actually better because Horner and I were late to our heat, we had to run to the start a couple of extra minutes there. It was another great experience: I had a great time training, spending time in Bend with Daver & Horner, and running the race!

There was beer provided by Deschutes Brewery and veggie burritos after the race, I'm not so sure the beer was a good idea because I ended up not feelin' too hot later on.

http://dirtyhalf.footzonebend.com/images/dirty_half.jpg
I finally downloaded the software to take the GPS data off of my Garmin watch. It can only store one run or course, but it is really cool.

I can produce any number of graphs showing heart rate, distance, elevation, speed, time, pace. The Garmin software can also output the way points to Google Earth and each way point is clickable to display the heart rate, distance, elevation, speed, time, pace. Really cool!!

Zenger Farm

I'm in this volunteer mini-camp where every Saturday we do a different volunteer activity related to sustainability. It hasn't really been explained whether its environmental or economic sustainability we are supposed to be learning about, but I'm pretty sure its the environmental kind.

Zenger Farm is located far out in SE Portland. Zenger Farm does outreach and educational programs relating to sustainable agriculture. I think they have camps for kids to come and look at the vegetables and pull off veggies. The farm itself is operated by 47th Avenue Farms, an organization that provides fruit, vegetable, and eggs to people depending on the kind of share they purchase. In return for using the land 47th Ave Farms lets Zenger Farms use their crops as a classroom.

I went out there last Saturday as part of my sustainability teamworks deal. In the first picture we're 'hilling' potatoes. Hilling potatoes is where you take soil (I can't call it dirt according to my soils professor, its soil) and pile it up over the stalk of the plant leaving about 6 inches exposed. The potatoe is a very hardy plant and this will help produce more potatoes. See that's sustainable, if you have only a limited amount of space, as this farm does, then by hilling you are increasing your yield without using arable land.


We also put trays of seedlings into the hoop house for the farm to get starts quicker then replant. Looked like tedious work putting one individual seed into about 72 little holes per tray. Other people are filling the trays with soil and another person tops the trays after they've recieved seeds.






That Saturday was also a special work day for share holders that reduce their seasonal cost by working at the farm and they'd be having a potluck afterwards. Well, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to stay but after I'd heard that someone was making ice cream I had to. For the meal I got a sausage and chatted with some of the guys that work full time for 47th Ave Farms. Really cool people that want to get more experience with growing their own food.

I was talking with a couple of guys and I asked him if they've ever thought about getting some really big speakers, there was a pause and I said ya know to play music...Not a big speaker like Al Gore, I thought that was going to illicit some laughs but they started on about how they'd met some another sustainable farmer that was doing some cool things with seeds and maybe he'd like to come and speak.

Well, the ice cream was awesome and a girl that I'd worked with on the potatoes went down to the raspberry plants and brought them back up to the farm house and gave people each a few to drop in their ice cream. That made it even better!

Rafting

I went to a Junior Chamber of Commerce last night and the topic was getting you personal finance in order by evaluating your debt situation, income, and goals. If you want more information about how to get your finances in order definitely eliminate your debt after creating a 3-month emergency fund then visit Yahoo finance to get ideas on how to start building up savings or a retirement.

Anyways, most of the people at the JCs like to party so that's why I go, plus to learn about personal growth topics like I briefly shared above and to find out what other cool things are going on around Pdx. I learn something new about most of them every time I go which is very cool

Well, we might have a rafting trip in August led by a new member named Pete, who is a really cool guy. It'll only be 50 bucks which is really cheap. He also likes to buy road bikes of CL and fix them up, he might be a good person to talk to when I want to get a little faster commuter bike.

Ciclovia - For the local bohemian

In Portland last Sunday (6-20) PDOT or Portland Dept. of Transportation ran an event called Sunday Parkways. For the morning and part of the afternoon 6 miles of roads were shut down to cars. People ran, biked, and walked between like 5 event centers where there were bands, DJs, Cliff Bar booths, discount helmets, jugglers, food vendors, other community related booths.

PDOT based this event on Ciclovias, which were started and are still done in Bogota, Columbia.
http://bikeportland.org/2007/07/31/more-on-ciclovias-from-bogotas-former-parks-commissioner/

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/north_portland_tries_enginefre.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/121426711658461.xml&coll=7

http://npgreenway.blogspot.com/

So what I helped with is a non-profit that does a thing called Safer Routes to School, these are former bike messengers or bike enthusiasts that go to local schools and teach kids how to ride their bike safely and observe traffic laws. What they were doing at the ciclovia was getting people that wanted to check out a bike and a helmet and ride to another park as a group. I just rode along and hung out, I should have been trying to get more people on bikes.

Where the story turns to become "for the local bohemian" is when I meet up with Jonathon, it was cold and sprinkling when I got there early Sunday morning. Jonathon suggested we go to his place to get some coffee and pick up some jackets, I was like sweet! So we go to his house and his house mates are sleeping outside on the sidewalk to protest a local ordinance that allows cops to roust homeless people and then they can't get a restful night sleep. For some reason I was reminded of a similar Sacramento experience.

The other thing that I noticed was a ton of fruit flies in the kitchen, then I noticed they were coming from the open indoor composting. It was a little gross.

I don't know how many of you like to whisper to dogs, I'm not a professional but I like to whisper nice things to dogs like: "Your a good dog, yes you are." At Jonathon's place there was an old and very friendly German shepherd that I whispered to and petted he liked it, I miss having a dog.

Jonathon made some coffee for me and another guy and set out some hummus he'd made. I didn't have a travel mug so he grabbed a jar with a lid for me to use for the bike ride to the next park. That jar wouldn't hold hot coffee much less me even handle it for more than a fraction of a second. He found another one of his travel mugs and we were off. Jonathon could also speak Spanish pretty fluently with some young women who were interested in the Safer Routes program.
My pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47943073@N00/

If you went to this please support the next one by email the city council members:

mayorpotter@ci.portland.or.us
dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us
samadams@ci.portland.or.us
Nick@ci.portland.or.us
rleonard@ci.portland.or.us

"Lost" episode of my blog

Warning: Lost spoiler!
If you can imagine this as the future parts of Lost where it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Jack has a beard and is freaking out then it jumps back to the Island and something happens. Well, that's what I'm going to try to do for some of the parts of my life.