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Search Results for: OREGON TRAIL

BLAZER LILLARD ERASES BAD PORTLAND MEMORIES

Ask any sports fan and they’ll tell you: are the most lasting memories of your team the wins or the losses? Because once the fan base gets used to winning, the losing always shocks. Every Cowboy fan knows this. The same with Oregon Duck football fans from 2010’s Auburn cheat game win. That was a […]

PROMOTE AMERICAN FUTURE WITH AN AXE

Without getting into the details, I’ve somehow collected about fifteen axes. I’ve become an axe repository. Along with axes for wood, I’ve found six guitars around the house. I claim one. ‘Why the axes,’ I wonder when I add them all up. Then it came to me. America was built with an axe of one […]

VOLUNTEER: THERE’S ALWAYS THAT ONE GUY

Have you ever been a volunteer and worked on a team and had to do teamwork stuff? Was it fun? Add family members with attitude on a house tear down and see how it goes. While it wasn’t a competition, I tore a house down with said family members and felt the need to prove […]

WRITE A BOOK, THEY SAID, IT’LL BE FUN

    Long form writing is like a walk in the woods with no map. In the dark. With animal noises. And cliffs on both sides of the trail. If that isn’t a picture of adventure, what is? And all you need to do is sit down and write. And stay down. For a long […]

Funeral Feelings Expressed With Shovels And Sweat, Salt And Sea Water

  “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening,” said his daughter.     My father had a cowboy funeral.   Instead of the nearest Boot Hill, his ceremony happened in the veterans section a big cemetery.   People from every […]

Portland Welcome Mat: How To Walk Around Downtown Portland

    One of the great things about sponsoring foreign exchange students after your own kids have been out of college for years is rolling out the welcome mat.   The Portland welcome mat. And dragging everyone possible along the Portland Trail.   My wagon train always starts with Saturday Market and the sort of […]

Five Miles From Tigard Equals Yellowstone?

  Looked for wildlife far and wide from Idaho to Wyoming to Montana and Washington.   Then I looked near Tigard in the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge five miles from home in Oregon.   There was more wildlife in one place than there was in four states.   Go Tigard, Go.

CANCER RESEARCH THROUGH BETTER BEER

    “I’m buying you a beer,” G said.   “That’s awfully nice, but you don’t have to,” I said.   “It’s that one,” he said.   “Which one?” I asked.   “At the bottom of the Daily Specials.”   I looked at the beer menu and didn’t see it.   “Where are the specials?” […]

SCIENCE EXPLAINED TO THE NON-SCIENTIST

    Some things need to be taken with a grain of salt, some with a whole salt box, but science explained for the non-scientific? Start shoveling, if general comments mean anything.   The Earth Is Not Flat?   Yes, it’s a discussion point, but for who? Who hasn’t seen something called a globe and […]

PORTLAND 1980: HOW TO SETTLE IN A NEW TOWN

    One song stuck with me on the bus ride from NYC to Portland 1980: The second verse of Lodi, by Creedence Clearwater:   I rode in on the Greyhound I’ll be walkin’ out if I go I was just passin’ through Must be seven seven months or more Ran out of time and […]