Mt St. Helens.

One of the most amazing sights we've had the pleasure of experiencing in the area. It's impossible to convey the magnitude of what happened here. You have to see it for yourself and even then, it's hard to imagine the scope of the whole event.

Ecola.

A trip out to Ecola State Park to observe sea creatures.

Mt. Hood in the morning.

I was finally able to get out riding early enough that the light on Mt. Hood wasn't completely washed out.

First eastern ride this year.

I had an itch to get out and ride in the Mt. Hood Wilderness Area so I rode two of my favorite trails, Knebal Springs and 8-Mile.

Berry Picking.

Heather and I picked strawberries and raspberries just outside Portland.

Rules Notes for Visitors.

It recently occurred to me that we're going to have quite a few visitors over the next three months. The following may help ensure a somewhat comfortable trip.

1. If you're allergic to dogs, see your Dr. and get an allergy prescription well before you come to stay with us. With three big dogs living in a 1000 sq/ft house, the dander piles up fast despite my best efforts to vacuum every day.

2. Bring a rain jacket and/or an umbrella...if you plan on visiting the coast, definitely make it a rain jacket, it WILL rain on you.

3. At the very least, bring something warm for your upper body. It's typically 30+ degrees colder at 5,000 feet than it is here in the city, sometimes it's more drastic than that in the evenings.

4. Be prepared to see higher gas prices. Surprisingly, regular is about $0.20 higher here than even D.C.

5. DO NOT TOUCH ATLAS WHEN YOU COME IN THE DOOR! I can't stress this enough, he's not an overtly friendly dog. I do everything I can to ensure a friendly meeting with Atlas and our guests and you'll notice that I'm very uneasy for the first hour when we have someone new in the house. The safest thing for anyone to do is to assume that he will bite you. It sounds extreme, but I take this very seriously. After 20 or so minutes of sniffing you out, he'll warm up to you. He'll let you know when he's ready for you to pet him when he sticks his head under your hand. Even then, unless you're one of the five people he explicitly trusts, be alert to his signals.

6. DO NOT TOUCH MY BEER OR I WILL BITE YOU! Not really. Anything on the bottom shelf is fair game. If it's on the top shelf, it's because I'm ageing or saving it. Touch it and suffer the consequences :) (seriously, don't) If I don't have something you like, the situation can easily be cured with a short walk to the grocery store. They stock a great variety of local craft brews, it's rare to leave in disappointment.

I think that's it. We'll do our best to show you a great time and tons of sights.

Graduation.

Today is Heather's birthday AND the day of her graduation ceremony at Lewis & Clark. We're both very proud of the effort she has put forth this last year.

 

Planted a tree.

What was originally supposed to be a trip to Parr lumber to get materials for a bookshelf, turned into a day of yard work. I didn't want to clean the garage to get the saw out anyway. We happened upon this crabapple tree at Seven Dee's and decided it would be a great addition to the front yard. Even better, when it fills out in a few years, it'll block the view of the camper parked in the yard across the street. Click to see the whole thing. If we're lucky, maybe the overhead power lines will act like radioactive steroids on the little tree.

 

Lewis River.

We took a trip along the Lewis River in Washington on Saturday.

 

For the Stewart Family.

So we haven't updated in a very long time, and this isn't exactly for everyone, but I think a few people might like to see some pictures anyway.

On Saturday, we took a drive down to the Redmond area to get a feel for it. It turns out that we're not crazy about the high desert. The area is nice, but it's completely flat, still a good distance from the mountains (relatively speaking) and there's very little tree cover at all. The pictures definitely stink, partially because I'm not a great taker of pictures, but my shortfalls weren't helped by the fact that I was aiming the camera into the sun. I have quite a few shots that looked great from the car, but the light completely washed out the snowy peaks when I snapped the shutter. Click em to make em big.

Also, two movies just for you. I didn't compress them, so they're huge, and lame, but you can right click and download them anyway.

These first two pictures are from rt. 26 while driving East from our house. These spots are roughly 40 minutes from the front door. You drive 40 minutes East from Baltimore and you're where...Annapolis?

That's Mt. Jefferson out the window with Mt. Hood in the rear view mirror. The other picture is of some stupid gorge, or George. Whatever it's called, it was about 300ft to the bottom.

I'm watching the Family Guy and can't be bothered to get creative with the picture descriptions or perhaps even to spell correctly. Regardless, here are a bunch of pictures of the same mountains over and over again. The first one is Hood from the top of the Cemetery climb, about 8 miles from the house. The second is of St. Helens from the highest point in Portland.

Mt. Hood again and St. Helens on the right. Click the pics to make big. You can barely make it out in the pics, but St. Helens mostly obscures Mt. Rainier. Looks closely and you can see the twin peaks of Rainier just peeking through the left side of St. Helens.

A slightly better view of St. Helens and the city. Also, Mt. Adams on the right.

Mt. Hood and Mt. Hood again.

So...we have a lot of mountains here, or at least a number of places from which to see the same mountains. I'm pretty sure you can't see this many mountains from Baltimore, but at least you have the humidity and allergies.

Accident.

 

Mt. Hood.

Heather and I went out to Mt. Hood in the recent past. Our goal for the day was to hike in the snow, which we did. If you're from the East Coast, you might notice something that's conspicuously absent from the picture (snow making machines.)

Your PPotD.

One of the reasons Portland is a great place to be a cyclist. Check the Photo page for more.

City ride.

Heather and I rode downtown today to run some errands. I snapped a few photos which can be appropriately found on the photo page. Click to make 'em big.

PPotD.

We had some pretty amazing color in the air tonight. Pete watched me take a picture of the sunset. Click it for a bigger pic.

P.S. Other than making the Pete pointer, no Photoshop modification was used.

PPotD.

I've posted some photos on the photo page as well.

Elliott Smith used to play here.

PPotD.

I went for a ride downtown after work today. See my rant to hear a little more about it. I'm going to try to post new pics as often as possible, just because Portland is new and interesting to me.

Also, I just noticed that my Contact box has mysteriously slipped down to the bottom of the page. That sucks. I don't care to fix it right now.

Here it is, you're Portland Picture of the Day.

Moved.

We're in Portland now. Why don't you come for a visit?

 

MARRIED!

Huge thanks to everyone involved. We had an absolute blast, and the reception went of better than we ever could have imagined. We hope that everyone had as much fun as we did.

We owe thanks to a great number of people and will express this on this site (as we have been expressing it elsewhere) by next week.

So here's a gigantic generic thank you to everyone; those who worked tirelessly for weeks to help us prepare...those who pulled things together at the last minute to help out...obviously our parents who put in a huge effort...and everyone who attended and helped make the reception the most fun (and longest running) party I've ever attended.

THANK YOU.

P.S. - We've only seen a few pictures from the wedding and reception. There were only about 8,934 digital and film cameras present, so PLEASE anyone who took pictures, (especially digital) burn us a CD and let us know how and when we can get it. We'd obviously love to see as many as possible and would like to make an album on this site.

Thanks again.