VT Day 1

Day 1: Epic snow, JDK, sledding stop to see DaBica, Franny, and Michael, cocktails with Tessa & Leslie with a surprise visit from Angela, Anise’s Peace & Justice Party.

Del’s

We went to Del & Edith’s post-holiday party, seeing some of the expected people as well as some unexpected PA snowboarding friends. April’s dog is into three-ways, but only with Carter…

What is the point of a beer this size?

Morristown

It was a great post-Thanksgiving night out with Carter, Ryan, Taura and Lindsay, who was on fire last night.

From the archive

I’ve been cleaning out my basement, finding lots of good stuff like this love note from Vin. Back from when everything came with a finger.

Pioneers

The guys at Pioneers are getting nuts with video…

Text messages

Portland – Day 7

Day 7 was short and sweet. Breakfast at Lorn & Dottie’s, a quick trip to Extracto for some take-home beans, and the most un-eventful flight home we’ve had in a while. No running for planes, no lost bags, nothing. When I get some time, I’ll have a gallery of about 200 photos of Faz texting.

We used to eat piles of potato pancakes at Lorn & Dottie’s when we lived in PDX.

Every trip gets a final photo, and this was it. Philly airport at midnight and about 100 degrees.

Portland – Day 6

• We did another trip to Extracto.
• Breakfast at Gravy. Enormous plates of food and really good.
• Vintage shops in Hawethorne
• Did our annual trip to The Office, one of my favorite stores anywhere.
• We swung by the PeetKegler empire to distract Kegler and Kara for a good hour. They’re doing a lot of great work, and have a good view.
• It’s not a trip to PDX without swinging by the piss-stench-filled Burnside skatepark.

• Off to Instrument’s global headquarters to meet up with Vin and Meghan.
• We then headed to fun park, where we did a decathalon of video games, air hockey, batting cages, and go-karts. Settled the monkey on the air hockey table with no mercy, and I think I probably drew blood.
• Where do you go from here? The Alibi, of course. Shitty karaoke but everything else top notch,

Portland – Day 5

• Breakfast at Grateful Bread, with some re-enactment of some of the greatest arguments ever.
• The waves were flat, so we decided to hike up the cliff where we went 2 years ago in the dark.
• Saw some idiots who don’t know how to drive in sand bury their cars. One guy thought his PT Cruiser would have no problem powering through deep sand. Then again, people in Portland can’t even drive in the rain and it rains all year there.
• Headed back to Portland to be back in time for dinner. We stopped by Evert & Jenna’s to see the aftermath of the wedding, and things were looking pretty good.
• With perfect timing, a skate deck that we ordered with a copy of Jenna & Evert’s invitation printed on it showed up just in time.
• We met up with a bunch of people at Old Time Pizza, which is another kickass Portland restaurant. The few people that aren’t riding fixed gear bikes around Portland are riding vintage motorcyles. That is except for Ehren, who showed up on his semi-new Harley. It was backed up against some much and outdoor tables, and when the vintage bikes sounded like moped he hit the throttle on his and sprayed mulch all over the people eating on the sidewalk, which was funny as shit since he had no idea. They weren’t happy at all.
• There was talk of going to see naked fire jugglers, and the guys on motorcycles headed out. Faz and I weren’t far behind, and we met up with them at Lucky Devil. There was plenty of naked but no fire juggling, and that was a let down.
• Faz and I went back to Jenna and Evert’s to pick up Tara. They were watching the mountain of photos we took while Faz posed for a hundred pictures with the dog.

Portland – Day 4

(Roll over the images for descriptions, click on them to see them larger, hit play for a slideshow)

• We tried to get Lorne and Dottie’s with Faz on the way to the beach, but they were closed so we tried Junior’s. Portland is the capital of great breakfast restaurants, and this is a new one on our list of places we now have to hit. We ran into Flo and a bunch of the wedding riff raff while we were there.
• From there it was off to the beach. We stayed at Ehren McGhehey’s house but this time he didn’t come down so we swung by his shop in McMinnville to pick up the keys. From there we hit WinCo, a supermarket trapped in the early 80’s.
• We didn’t make it to Pacific City until 5:00, but the timing was perfect. The weather was warmer than usual, and the waves were shoulder high and glassy. There’s still no getting used to wearing a 6/4 with gloves and booties when it’s almost August. See, there are good things about Jersey…
• Faz brought DVD’s of Curb Your Enthusiasm and we watched about 7 episodes in a row, got some pizza, and crashed hard from the wedding.