Happy 4th of July!

Wednesday was Craig’s birthday. We celebrated by having a picnic at Mt Tabor and watching the Velo on the Volcano bike races. It was more humid than usual for Portland, but a lovely night. Later that night we awoke to a magnificent thunderstorm, also a rare occassion here in Portland.

Since we are now entering July, this seems like as good a time as any to try and recap the first six months of 2008. Here goes…

January

Craig’s sister, Teresa and Craig’s man-crush (otherwise known as Teresa’s boyfriend) Dave spent New Year’s with us. Craig came down with the flu so we rang in the new year at home watching Arrested Development. When Craig realized that he hadn’t taken photos for 2008 for the humancalendar Bonzi got to stand in as “human” and represent the double ought eight for a couple of days until Simmi could come over and pose as a proper human 2008.

January also marked my first meeting with Alayne, an awesome personal trainer. I helped her create a website for Personal Team Fitness, and in the last six months she has helped me achieve a level of fitness I have not experienced in my adult life. Yay, Alayne!

February

We started off the month with a good old fashioned chili rumble. Thanks to Molly it had a kick-ass flyer. Although hard to tell from the small version above that is actually a depiction of our house, complete with myself, Craig, Kevin and Bonzi being deluged by a volcano of chili.

Since we’d never had an all chili potluck/cook-off we didn’t know what to expect. However, the timing was right, the lure of warm chili and good friends brought together 13 chilis for the competition and a variety of sides. Patrick has a great photo and recap on flickr.

Michael, who was the catalyst, turning what was first planned as a winter chili open house into a all chili potluck and cook-off (thereby allowing Craig and I to play host and not cook any chili at all) by noting what a great chili he makes, proved it by winning the vegetarian category with, “Business Time” a habañero chili. The meat, and overall winners with Bryan and Julie Bingham, with a white bean chicken chili, “White Shadow.” The two of them are shown here with their crown of glory:

February is also the annaul celebration of the Dove Lewis Superheroes. Bonzi has been donating blood for over four years now. This February was the first time I was in town and we were able to attend their celebration for the dogs. It was held at Lucky Lab, and Bonzi got a certificate for his 16 units. He also got dog carrot cupcakes and a goodie bag of treats and toys to take home. They took photos of all the dogs at the event to create mugs to sell on Cafepress. His is adorable, so please buy one and support Dove Lewis.

It was a beautiful day, so before the event we went across the street to Clever Cycles and rented a bakfiets. Craig took Bonzi and I for a ride along the Eastbank Esplanade and Springwater Trail Corridor. You can get a sense of our adventure in the video Craig made:

Bonzi\’s Bakfiets Ride

March

In March, the long discussed article about the chicken cooperative I’ve been involved in was finally out in Edible Portland. You can read the article, but there was also a video made by Cooking Up a Story, that I think is a better representation of my experience, mostly because I’m interviewed. It has been a lot of fun spending my Wednesday nights tending the girls at Zenger Farm, and I have to say, I’ve had the best eggs of my life over the past year.

Barack Obama came to Portland for the first time in March. Craig and I went to see him at the Memorial Coliseum. When we drove to Little Rock and back for Christmas 2006 my aunt Martha loaned me The Audacity of Hope. We enjoyed having him read his well-thought and well-rounded ideas about how our country could be a better place. The book ended as we passed Mt Shasta just before midnight, and Craig said it best, “How can it be over. He isn’t president.” That said, we had the nose bleed seats for his speech, and once again Craig said it best, “It doesn’t matter if its a rock band or a politician, bad seats in an arena really ruin the experience.”

March also marked my 36th birthday. For my birthday Craig made me doors for the previously open storage (Dave’s cabinet) above the built-in shelves in my office. He custom-crafted a wooden labricorn silhouette painted Bonzi brown as adornment:

I also went to D.C. for a meeting. While I was there I got to see my cousin Mary Catherine, who I hadn’t seen for years, and my dad. We ate delicious food and had great weather. The meeting itself was also informative and interesting!

When I got back to Portland, Craig and I flew down to Sacramento and spent my birthday with Teresa and Dave. It was a fantastic week-end. We rode bikes all over town, even through the mall, and ate lots of great food. Teresa even through me a birthday party complete with “friends” and homemade cupcakes!

Its worth mentioning that just before my birthday, it was my second anniversary of having Craig as more than a great friend. I love Craig. I don’t think I can put into words how great it has been to spend so much time with someone that appreciates me for the person I am, and yet just by being the person they are, makes me want to be a better person. He is fun, creative, considerate and so much more.

April

My dad and his younger brother and sister all came out to Portland for a long week-end in April. I had not seen my uncle John for a decade or more. I hadn’t seen my aunt Sara and her husband Bruce for a few years. It was wonderful to have them in town for a few days.

I finally got to see Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. I had read about it years ago and had been hoping that I’d get the chance to see it. Thanks to my bikportland feed on my google home page I learned it was playing at the Hollywood as a benefit for Austin Miller. The directors were on hand to discuss the film. It was every bit as good, if not better, than I could have imagined. These kids  had a vision and spent their entire childhood bringing that vision to life. It was a great reminder about the importance of sticking with your dreams. Persistence does pay off.

I had a meeting in Chicago at the end of April, and got to have dinner with Steve Schmidt and his friends from Italy, Paolo and Marcelo and their Blake/e/e/e bandmate from Indiana, Oren. Paolo and Marcelo made an incredible authentic Italian pasta dinner. They were days away from starting tour, and unfortunately, I failed to recall, and thus make, their show in Portland.

After leaving Chicago I flew down to San Diego so Craig and I could see one of the last Spiritualized Acoustic Mainline shows and visit his friend Brick. I’m a huge sucker for Spiritualized, and I really did feel that I was going to miss out if I didn’t get to see them play acoustic with strings and gospel singers. The show was incredible. We were able to stand at the front of the stage, and thus block out most everyone else and just focus on the music.

On Saturday we went to the annual day zero kick-off party for the Pacific Crest Trail. Both Brick and Craig hiked the PCT in the 1990s, which is in fact, how they became friends. Neither Craig nor I had any sense that the event would be hundreds and hundreds strong. It was really quite amazing. They took photos of all the hikers in each of the 2000s, and then a group photo for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It was funny, but there were more people there that hiked in the 70s than there were for the 80s and 90s. Only later did Craig and I realize that likely many of the 80s and 90s hikers are still fully enmeshed in raising families, whereas the 70s hikers are likely to be retired. This is the 90s group shot:

The funnies part of this photo is that Craig asked Brick if Ryan was at the event. Ryan is a guy Craig had spent about a week hiking with in 1996. Only after they connected did he realize they had been standing right beside each other in the 1990s photo (Ryan is holding the 1990s sign). On Sunday Brick and Kristen took us to the beach and then we walked for delicious homemade ice cream milk shakes. A great week-end all around.

May

Craig and I went to Austin for Mother’s Day. Our friends Molly and Dave decided to get out of Portland for the hardest months of April, May and June. Craig had never been to Austin, so it seemed a great time for him to visit, and my mom and I had a great Mother’s Day in 2006, so she made reservations for us at the Austin Motel and we got our tickets and headed down.

The first day we were there we went to a great lunch spot thanks to Greg’s suggestion. While we were there Kevin texted Craig for some phone numbers and when he wrote back and mentioned that we were in Austin he suggested we go to Lance’s bike shop. We looked up the address on the map and since it was only a few blocks away we walked over after lunch. Our timing was impeccable. Though the shop’s official opening was the next day they were still letting folks in. And, Lance himself, had just arrived at the store from a ride. Craig waited for him to shower and then asked for, and got, a great humanclock photo:

The next day Molly and Dave took us out to the Guadalupe River for a fantastic lazy day of tubing down the river. I won’t say how much beer we drank, just that it was surprising to us all that it still wasn’t enough.

The week we got back to Portland we were teased with weather as fantastic as we’d had in Austin. While short-lived we enjoyed it while we could. We went up to Mt Tabor to watch a stage of the Mt Hood Classic. Craig shot excellent video capturing just how fast and frantic the event was:

I headed east for Memorial Day week-end so that I could visit my dad, and see his partner Ed’s new house. Ed had just moved into his house the week before, but when I got there it already felt like home. The weather was perfect for the house he bought:

The day after Memorial Day I went up to Brooklyn to visit Monica and Chris. Their daughter, Clementine, was due the day after I arrived, and yet she decided to wait until the day I was leaving to start her very slow process of being born. The contractions started Saturday, but she didn’t actually enter the world until Monday night!!! That said, it allowed me to have a fantastic vacation with Monica, walking all around Brooklyn, eating good and mediocre food, getting pedicures, and finding frocks. While I can’t wait to meet Clementine when we are in Hawaii for Dylan and Verena’s wedding I was honestly a bit relieved she waited since I know nothing about tending to newborns.

While quite blurry, I did get a great shot of Chris and Monica standing under an awning during a flash flood while trying to walk and help the labor along.  Dylan, Verena and I are in a cafe across the street where we had a flavor-less brunch:

June

In June we got new recycling and yard debris cans. Bonzi had to inspect:

The chicken co-op celebrated its first anniversary with a solstice pig roast and potluck at the farm.

June 12-28 was also Pedalpalooza in Portland. The first week-end our house all joined in on the Midnight Mystery ride. It was tons of fun to just ride through the streets with hundreds of other cyclist of all sorts. The next night roommate Kevin, Craig and other friend Kevin all joined the World Naked Bike ride (lucky for you, I have no pictures to share of that one). I chickened out on that ride because I couldn’t imagine being naked on my bike in weather that cold.

Our roommate Kevin had also decided that he would put on a ride for Pedalapalooza. He and his coworker and friend Kevin (no, not the Kevin from the naked bike ride, but I don’t blame you for being confused) chose the Big Lebowski as their theme and put together the “Dude Ride.” Along with Craig and some of his coworkers they did an amazing job of planning out a fantastic night. (Roommate Kevin is in the red robe and coworker Kevin is in the green.)

This post is tagged bikes, chickens, food, fun, recap, travel