Washougal: A Zip Line Runs Through It

In a world, where the economy is in shambles, one over zealous County intern infiltrates a zip line operation to bring it down from the inside and ruin everyone else's fun!

Zip Line Controversy - Columbian.com

Feds Sue Washougal Man - Columbian.com

Gov v. D.Hoyt - Justia.com

How to be more of a Portlander

Sort of like a feature I did on another website I'm again high on caffo and I need to make a costume for the Night Ride tonight, just like before I decided to re-purpose some old clothes to make a Cast Away type outfit.

Using my same Benchmade (made in Oregon) knife to create the frayed edges that key to the effect.





Least this episode won't be lost in the ether!

No, but I've got a Three-Five-Seven.

Dad said in jest to me after the old man had turned back after asking “You boys got a tow strap?”

This is what I'd call about midway into my Father's Day adventure. It starts out like this:

Meet Dad at his house, drive to Rainbow Lake to meet my Sister according to her text message directions which said grab the map out of the Winco bag tacked to the street sign for Cooper Ridge and follow road 205 and pink ribbon the whole way. Easy right?!

Everything was cool until we tried to find the route up to Rainbow Lake, it was about 7pm on Friday night when we pulled up into the hills. 'Reprod' is a new word I learned to describe the area around Rainbow Pond, it's where it's clear cut then re-planted to reproduce the timber.

My Dad and I were driving for about 2 hours trying to find the right road, there was no road that was 205, there was no pink ribbon, and the Google map left for us in the Winco bag was just a line tracing a white line for some unlabeled road on this map. Dad was getting ultra mad, like: I didn't f'ing sign up to hunt around in the backwoods for a campsite. So at about 9 we were done and heading back out to the highway to sleep there the night, driving down this steep gravel road through the reprod I noticed headlights from another truck coming up, so we pulled to the side so they could pass. We pulled over, but the lights weren't advancing, so we crept down a little further and rounded a corner to find an old truck stopped.

This old guy comes shambling up to us and says 'You boys got a tow strap?' like we'd turn around the truck somewhere and pull him up the hill, with his tent trailer. Dad said, no sorry, but we backed up to a wide spot and helped them push the truck and trailer. The old man was also carrying around a fat old dachshund close to his belly, he climbed back into the truck and gave it some gas, but it wouldn't go!

As the old man climbed out of his old truck, with the dog still hunched into his stomach a large Pyrex measuring cup fell out of the cab, my Dad grabbed it and handed it back.

The old guy had some friends behind him in a Mercedes SUV and one of them backed the pickup truck and trailer down to a wide spot. We asked the old man where he was heading and he said 'Rainbow Lake,' Dad said 'We were headed there to find my daughter's camp.' The old guy said 'Rainbow Lake is great! It's so nice!' He proceeded to tell us how to get there, we decided to continue our plan to sleep by Highway 22 for the night and look for Twisted Sister the next morning. As we passed by the Mercedes Dad told that guy that we were just going down to sleep down at the bottom. 'Okay man, we'll see ya down there. Hey, happy Father's Day, man!' So weird! Dad returned the holiday wishes and we rolled down.

Fast forward (because this is getting really long!) to my Sister showing us the actual way to get up to her campground that she intended with her map and the few pieces of pink tape she put out. It was this rutted out, overgrown, practically a goat trail of a logging road, but we took it up, no way we would have found this on our own! Didn't catch any fish and got really cold, but spent some good times with Dad, I just wish he'd chill out sometimes!

We hiked up to Marion Lake, a real lake, with Sevlyor rubber rafts and fished for about 5 hours, got a bunch of nibbles and cold feet. It was pretty fun though! I would row the boat as my sister would hold the two rods and we'd kind of troll with out neon, sparkly marshmellow compound on the hook.





Another thing about this trip: my Sister and I pulled our raft in before Dad, he finally showed up to the little beach, you could really tell how much concentration he had on his face and coordination with careful paddle strokes to get that little raft around a snag and to the beach.

Dog Show!

This past weekend I helped at a canine (has anyone noticed how K9 and canine mean the same thing but kinda bring up different connotations) agility competition. My role was to sit in the ring, not move, or make eye contact with the dogs, and reset or change the jumps.

It was amazing to see how well trained and speedy these dogs are. These pictures show some of the typical obstacles. In the first round the owner can have the dog do them in any order for maximum points, this was also the round where there was an area where only the dog could go into. This forced the owner to direct the dog by verbal commands only to get the bonus for doing the 3 obstacles correctly.

The most common dogs for the agility competition seem to be dobermans, german shephards, border collies, but there were also shaggy afghans, poodles, scotty dogs and other tiny dogs who were pretty dang adorable! Especially when the small ones would rum up the teeter toter and scrunch down as it would slowly tip down the other way.

A guy that works in finance in my office was also there with his wife and their dog, he also takes photos to sell at the show, he's shared a few with me.

Joe's dog leaving the weave obstacle.

Dog going up narrow ramp.

Bishu jumping an 8" jump.

Beagle jumping and 8" jump.



Bishu coming out of the chute.

Big dog jumping.

Big dog coming out of the chute.


At some point during the show, while there are dogs barking and people cheering I dozed off.

Piedmont Neighborhood Update

I just got back from the Piedmont Neighborhood Association meeting, it was great, I signed up to help a local school build a community garden - I'll use my rain barrel skills for good now. It was funny, a woman stood up to introduce herself as a person involved in the Stop The Columbia River Crossing (stopthecrc.org) and a couple of people were also there to promote the $4.2B mega highway, bridge, and lightrail project.

I am going to write a letter to the Portland Parks Department telling them that they should grow fruit trees in their parks, people can enter a lottery to be able to pick bushel of apples when they come ripe, for example.

I'm also going to write a letter to the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services telling them to build more bioswale treatment facilities in our neighborhood. These will treat (and store) road runoff prior to their entry into the UICs that handle our road runoff in this area of Portland.

We may be getting a Farmer's Market soon at Ainsworth and Albina, in the vacant lot there. That would be so great for the area.

Brew-a-thon

Last Sunday was a big day of beer brewing and total fun! I want to get into brewing beer, so I got my Dad's old kit (carboy, bottle capper, bottles, tubes, other things that I don't know how to use yet) and headed over to my coworker Brian's house to make some beer with him and his friend Ox.

The night before we spent about $200 on malt extract, yeast, and malt grain. Brian had thought up 6 recipes for different kinds of beer, when we get done we'll have a: nut-brown stout, IPA, a red, a dark lager, a citrus blonde, and something else I can't quite remember.

We had malt cooking on two burners inside and a turkey deep-fat fryer outside, then added the malt extract, then the hops, then the rest of the hops. It was quite a process! I was there about 9 hours, Brian didn't wrap up until about 11pm. That all after he drove up from Corvallis with a hangover after partying it up after the Floater concert.

During the off time we drank beer and played a couple games of Settlers. Settlers is great! It's got this board made of hexagonal cards that you rearrange for each new game, it's really fun and fast paced!

I will have to let you know when I get my share of the 32 gallons of beer, which will be about 100 bottles of beer (on the wall) to try to fit in my fridge!

Gary Johnson

The guy in the center of the picture is Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico whom I had a chance to hear speak a few weeks ago at Lola's Room, I'll get back to this place. He is running an exploratory campaign right now to decide whether to run as Libertarian, I'll get back to them. He's a really interesting guy, he was or is an entreprenuer; he started a handy-man business and grew it to over a thousand employees, he sold it before becoming governor.

He talked about his background and answered questions from the audience. This was one of the few times that I've been around a politician and it was really interesting when he answered questions from these people, straight off the cuff and honest.

I'm a poster boy for big government, my position was created through ARRA (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), it has a website where contractors and other employers enter how many people they've hired as a result of the stimulus every quarter. Anyways, Gary Johnson is the man when it comes to keeping government small, he cut 1,000 jobs during his two terms (which seems like as many would be reduced through natural attrition), while the guy after him increased their roles by 4,500. He also talked about how he is different from the present governor from A to Z, he told about 'H' which was for 'helicopter', he flew in it something like 6 times, his successor has flown in it 1,000 times and purchased one for his official use, seems wasteful to me...

Another thing I liked about him was his stance on legalization of drugs, he talked about a policy called harm reduction. Harm reduction is the reduction in harm that a drug user would cause themselves or others in order to get their fix. An real world example he had of this was from the chief of police in Zurich, Switzerland, if anyone had an addiction to heroin they could get an authorization to have as much heroin as they needed. They would no longer need to steal to pay for the heroin, dealers would have to move somewhere else, and the drug disputes would be handled in the courts. This police chief told him that crime had been reduced significantly in Zurich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_E._Johnson

I've been reading a lot about the Libertarian ideals lately and though I'm not a Republican nor one of the crazy Tea Party people, I feel more and more like our liberties have been taken away.

About Lola's Room: it's usually a dance club at night playing eighties music while people bounce up and down on the bouncy wood floor. That made it kind of an odd venue for this event.