Saturday, April 15, 2006

Phil and Maile had their kid

We are back in Portland now and are glad to announce that our good friends Phil and Maile just had thier first kid.

Here are the technical stats:

Name: Ella Virginia Ross (girl)
Weight: 6 pounds 8 ounces (heavy)
Length: 19 inches (long)

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Goddess Dawn of Chuckville on the Minam River in Eastern Oregon


We have arrived in Portland OR, introduced Vida to her home with Michelle and Allen, and now is a good time for an Oregon post.

Dawn is my good friend from undergrad at Southern Oregon University. Later we were in the Resource Assistance for Rurale Environments (R.A.R.E.). Dawn and I were placed working for the GIS departments for Wallowa and Wasco Counties. This was our introduction to Eastern Oregon. Eastern Oregon is completely different than Western Oregon. This is where people really hunt and fish. Yeehaw!!

Dawn lassied up with Chuck. Chuck is the type of guy who you could spend an afternoon with and feel like you've been good friends for years. For a while they lived in a little old school house above the Minam River Campground. For a better description of the area read the following article from a fly fishing travel writer. Rat Pack Steelhead In Bing Crosby’s Paradise Part One

So here is a little plug for my good friends Dawn and Chuck in Minam Oregon who own the historic Minam Hotel. The Minam Motel is nestled virtually within the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area, and sits on the bank of the Wallowa River at the confluence of the Minam and Wallowa Rivers.

Since I'm not a hunter or fisher my favorite memory is floating down the Minam River in an innertube then running back up the river and doing it again. Also Hell's Canyon for rafting and hiking is very close by. Good Times in Oregon!

We are currently at the Goat Farm. I've got to get back to my fresh goat milk and coffee! Check out Missdee's French Alpine Dairy Goats.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Hasta Luego

We are in the airport right now hopefully all of our bags will make it onto the plane and to Portland safely. Especially the one with the cat in it.

Amazingly she went into the cat carrier easy at the house, like she knew we were moving. Typically you have to shove her pretty good to get her into the case.

We have 6 checked bags at 50 pounds each, the cat, two carry ons at 40 pounds each, and two laptop bags stuffed to the hilt. We were waiting in line and Roberta heard someone bitching about how much stuff we had. So the next time you are traveling and see someone with an unreasonable number of bags please understand that they might be moving. Before today I probably would have been in the crew that was doing the bitching.

Well, we will be boarding our flight soon so expect the look of the pictures to change. Less sun, more rain, no palms and bananas, and maybe even a little snow.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Our final trip to Puerto Viejo - We are leaving tomorrow


We decided that for our last weekend here we would take a trip to Puerto Viejo and get some beach time in before we leave. We got a rental car and headed out for two days. We stayed at Roberta's favorite hotel, Casa Verde. It was my first time there and I liked it. The room was great and the pool was awesome. My only gripe was that the beds in our room were well past the time to throw them out. The only bed big enough for me and Roberta had a huge divot on my side so I had to sleep in the other bed in the room which had metal springs gouging me in the back. If I would stay there again I would test out the beds before I accepted a room.

We had a great time there. We went down past Manzanillo and probably looked at the Panamanian frontier. Then we just pulled up a spot on the beach and chilled out. We were going to rent motorcycles and go for a mini tour but the guy who was renting them had a bad attitude so we decided not to. We made the better choice as I was able to finish the Culture Shock Costa Rica book. I will write a review of that in another post.

After a couple days in PV we decided to drive back and get into the real world. You know, to start packing since we are leaving on Thursday. I was driving from PV to Limon and I was going fairly fast but Roberta was prompting me to go even faster. We were railing along and I hit this big pothole and Roberta screams because the hubcap flies off into the ditch. We had to stop and try to find it. We found it but we had broken a piece off of it so we just threw it into the trunk to deal with later.

About halfway to San Jose I gave the wheel to Roberta and we continued. She was cruising along at about 60 and came across a car eating pothole. There was no way to avoid it so she just hit it with the front right wheel of the car hard. We made it home and got out and looked at the tire. It was half flat and the rim had a huge dent in it. I tried to put the hubcap back on but it wouldn't fit. I had to go borrow a hammer from the guard in our complex and pound it flat so that I could get the hubcap on.

It was Sunday evening and we needed to find some zip ties to tie the hubcap onto the car. We went to the new Hiper Mas in San Pedro but we couldn't find any zip ties. We asked the guard if he knew where any were. He was like, "No no, we don't have any" And we were like "Oh come on man, help a brother out" Costa Ricans can't stand to help if you act a little sad or aggitated. He went into the back and came back out with 8 zip ties and he gave them to us for free. He was a life saver since we had to take the rental car back at 9:30 in the morning.

We took the rental car back after zip tieing on the hub cap and they didn't charge us for anything. They were pointing at the rim and he called his boss over but there were no problems. Whew.

This will likely be the last post from Costa Rica. Expect the scenery to change and the stories to change. We have had a great time in Costa Rica and would consider coming back but the world is so big and unexplored.

Click for more pictures of the trip