Portland Again

Have a few appointments at the Portland VA. Timing was perfect, right after a storm. Forecaste is for clear and cold for about a week. Left at noon with the temperature in the low teens. 

The birds prefer the seed glued to the birdhouse to the well stocked feeder. 

The drive over was pure "winter wonderland". 

Will try for some grandkid pics before trip home next week. 

Stay safe, warm, and at home this coming "amateur night".

Christmas is Coming in Denver

Spent the last week with the Sodens in Denver.

 Before I left I had to go to the Bend post office. I managed to arrive in the middle of a local nonprofit mailing 478 Christmas packages to deployed military men and women from the area. 

This was just part of the mailing. The post office turned out all hands and dedicated two of their five windows to process them all. All in all, it went pretty well and nobody in line for the other three windows was complaining. 

Spencer came down with a fever on the day I arrived and missed the whole week of school. Amy got it three days later and the rest of us are holding our collective breaths. Everyone is on the mend now and Mom and Dad are looking forward to back to school day tomorrow. 

Whole family spent two days building four gingerbread houses 

Spencer wanted to put his three Ninjas and the Christmas tree inside the small house so I took this before we put on the roof. 

Grandpa developed a reputation as a roofing contractor.  

Molly added the candy cane arch after the group photo. 

Been a fun week and it's back to Bend tomorrow. 

The Alpaca Ranch

Louis had a Birthday celebration last night. He's three. 

As you can see, it was well documented. 

Today we went to one of the many Alpaca ranches in the area. 

There were lots of alpacas. 

They were very friendly and curious 

Especially when you had grain in your hand. 

Weather was perfect. 

Grand Daughters

Nina has found yet another way to share her hair control devices with grandpa. 

It was either this or the purple one with Hello Kitty on it. Nina has a hard time parting with anything purple. 

Rain has stopped and sun is out. Must go outside and let the little ones run.

Perfect weather for it. 

Happy Thanksgiving

The grandkids and their support unit arrived yesterday.

It doesn't seem fair that one package could contain so much cute.

The night before when Papa was holding him before a barf bowl. An iPad is to Louis as the word "squirrel" is to the dog in Up. 

Nina submits to hair combing; not her favorite activity.

The cooking began at first light.  Now a last minute trip to Fred Meyers, then the good part starts.

Enjoy your family and friends today and be thankful (and warm).

False Advertising

I've been accused of false or deceptive advertising when I keep referring to the weather here as "perfect". Seems that some of my friends here don't have the proper state of mind. Why just yesterday I finally finished shoveling 18" of perfect weather. I'd show you pictures but they look identical to the ones I took last year.

That was after an identical storm that left all of the old timers in the neighborhood telling us new comers, "I've lived here all my life and we haven't seen this much snow in the last 30 years." I'm anxious to hear what they say now I'm still waiting for some of them to dig out to the street so we can all stand around leaning on our shovels and sharing. To borrow from an old colloquialism, the first "sharer" doesn't have a chance.

Anyway, got to keep working on the driveway. We've got room for the Subaru but grandkids are coming so must get rid of the rest of the "perfect weather" before they get here as it doesn't look like there is a really big warming trend coming anytime soon.

I know that the weather has been perfect where you are, but stay warm anyway.

The BD 5

Digging through all those clothes that got stored when I "outgrew" them. Thought I'd never get into this again but it was too nice to throw away. I don't think anyone else would want it; unless their name was Troy and they were building (or flying ) a BD5.

It is a bit personalized. 

In case you aren't familiar with the BD5 it was also known as the Silver Bullet when Coors used it in an add campaign.

They used the jet version.

The BD5 saga is a long story of dreamers, skeptics and some very good design ideas. Burt Rutan was Jim Bede's chief aeronautical engineer. The main problem was Jim Bede was a great innovator with a flawed business plan that bordered on a pyramid scheme.

Here's a link to a website with more details should you be curious.  http://www.bd5.com/

I bought the kit when I was a fireman in Thousand Oaks and moonlighted as a BD5 salesman for one of the two BD5 dealers (Ron Beecher) in Southern Calif. He opened a shop in Thousand Oaks where we helped other kit owners assemble their kits on our jigs. It was a good plan. The only problem was Jim Bede couldn't keep up with the demand and the whole thing fell apart.

It was at the shop in Thousand Oaks where I met Francis Gary Powers, the ex U2 pilot shot down over Russia during the cold war. He was interested in buying a BD5 kit. We talked flying and helicopters as he had just landed a new job flying the local NBC affiliates modified Jet Ranger news chopper. He never bought the kit because he died when he ran out of fuel while landing at Van Nuys airport. He was returning from filming a brush fire and din't successfully auto rotate the heavilly modified Jet Ranger after the engine quit.

But that's another story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers

There are a few flying today as builders finished their kits on their own. They had to engineer and make their own parts to finish their planes, so there are no two exactly the same. I was able to sell my half completed kit to an Aussie who put it all into a car he bought in California an shipped to Australia. I also got my $400 deposit on the manufactured version back.

The jumpsuit is all I have left. I'm keeping it!

Raining today but forcasted perfect tomorrow.

Stay warm.

Table Tops Ready For Shipping

I finally got the slabs to a state suitable for shipping to Denver.

This is the underside. Had to put in some reinforcement along each of the arms as they will break off quite easily. Made a 2" deep saw cut and filled it with some epoxy and fiberglass strips. Then sanded it down and gave it a final coat of epoxy. So each "arm" of the slab has beam running through the narrow sections.

You can see one arm has the tip broken off; happened before we got it so we decided to leave it as is. I haven't counted the rings but I did count a small section and estimate this tree was between 700 and 1000 years old. 

The top sides got an oil finish. 

The big one is a lot lighter. 

But the smaller one has more grain character. 

Wrap in plastic, build a box and foam it in place.

Add the small top and popcorn. Then a sheet of 1/2" foam and screw on the top.

All ready for UPS. Then I noticed that UPS has a extra charge for wood or metal containers. Guess I'll be wrapping it in cardboard before taking it in tomorrow.

The new look. Went from leprechaun to Col Sanders. 

Weather is starting to look very fallish. Could even see some very short lived snow showers this weekend. Still awfully perfect during the midday hours.

Next trip is to Denver in early Nov.  I'll report on how the tops faired in shipment and what we decide to do about a base for each table.

Stay warm.

Back to Portland

Just a quick trip to Portland for a Timbers game.

Louis is getting into Leggos.

The trees are full of berries.

We stopped in Hood River to load up with the Fruit harvest and then all gathered in Redmond for some Fall activities.

Louis was transfixed by the mirror in the play house.

He's flying up and down the stairs. Seems like yesterday they were a complete barrier to him.

We went out to the Smith Rock corn maze. There were pony rides.

Dutifully recorded.

The Corn maze was done in a Godzilla theme.

The slide was still there.

Smith Rock with some dramatic lighting. Would love to have it out our back yard.

There was a sale on Halloween costumes at Freddys. Nina wants to be a cat but can't find the right costume.

Things are almost back to whatever normal is around here. In the 80s today, 60s tomorrow.

Hoping to do a Steelhead drift trip before the end of the year. Working now on Amy's Juniper tables and refining the camping arrangement.  The car top tent works well but after setup you lose a lot of mobility. I'm looking at putting it on a small trailer. Trying to keep it light enough to pull with the Subaru. We'll see!

Teri is getting into weaving. No loom yet but soon.

Here is the result of her first two day class.  The photo is slightly distorted; there is no variation in the width.

Hope the coming storm is not the beginning of winter; snow is forecasted in the mountains. I've heard stories of winter already showing up in Alaska. Imagine that!

Weather's perfect here.

But, winter is coming. 

Heading West

Let's see, I left off at the Big Horn. After that we went to the Missouri River at Craig MT. Four fly shops, one restaurant, one burrito cart and a bar. 

The fish were big. 

There were browns. 

And bows. Rog got the biggest but I wasn't able to get a picture of it. 

This smaller one was the only one of his I was around to document. 

We stayed at a state campground. 

The fishing from the bank was difficult because of the large amount of weeds floating down the river. 

Today and tomorrow we are in Ennis, MT on the Madison River. The river is perfect, clear and low enough to wade. The fish a little harder to locate and no pictures yet. 

Few head of cattle moving along the highway. 

Nice setting. 

Fishing in the morning then heading west to start the treck home. 

Weather should be perfect. 

The Big Horn

Water was high and tons of weeds floating down made for tough fishing

Rog got a nice brown at this spot. 

Stopped in Bozeman for Pizza with Jake.

He likes it here. 

We are on the Missouri River north of Helena, MT. 

Looks like rain for the weekend.