The stretch of vitality

So after almost eight months of searching, about 33 viewings, looking at many hundreds of web pages, getting outbid twice, and having two uncooperative sellers, I have finally at long last found a fantastic house in Louisville and signed a contract to purchase it! I’ll post more details after closing and it is officially mine (end of May).

Friday I went to meet a new friend and we ended up going to a minigolf/batting/driving range/arcade type amusement park. We only had a few minutes, but I did a few tokens in the batting cages. I have had this weird jonesing to see if I can still hit a baseball for a while, so it was fun to finally satisfy that. It turns out that yes, I can still hit them. I made contact with just about every pitch, fouled off an awful lot, but had a fair share of good long drives. When it comes to golf though, I’ve never done it and I was pretty much a complete disaster at the driving range. Whiffing was common. Driving 18 yards at ground level was common.

Last night Andrew and I went to a very underwhelming improv comedy show in Denver. Andrew has been designing, making, and drinking banana-based smoothies like a madman recently. I’ve been partaking fairly regularly as well, although my obsession recently has been homemade chicken burritos with black beans and rice.

Now, the real big news is that probably within the next day or so I will be an Uncle! My sister is going to the hospital to deliver her baby boy this evening and they are planning to induce labor tomorrow. We are all very excited and filled with anticipation for Baby Murz (as he is thus far known).

Wednesday morning I did my final yoga class (core) at Yoga Union two blocks from Bernie’s place. Andrew and I grabbed a yummy lunch at Detour Cafe and then did the short drive up to Seattle. In Seattle, we met up with MoJo for dinner and conversation, which was very jovial and enjoyable. Then we motored on up to the Canadian border. The border crossing was more eventful than I expected. We crossed at a small border crossing along Route 539. This is a strange place to cross, I gather. The reason we were doing so was immediately before getting in the car in Portland, we did priceline for a hotel in Vancouver. This got us a good rate, but at a Super 8 hotel about 45 minutes east of Vancouver. So we arrived at the border crossing at 11:51 pm, and it was lucky because apparently they are closed between midnight and 8 am. I think there’s a weird thing when you ask a question with the context of "are these people a threat?", the way you hear the answer is a bit colored by the context. Anyway, we explained to them that the two of us (scruffy 30-something males) were on a road trip from Colorado planning to visit Vancouver for two days. The agent remarked that coming all the way from Colorado for a two-day visit was unusual, and we explained that we had spent time in Portland. This combined with the fact that Andrew has a California driver’s license even though we said we are both living in Colorado, combined with whatever other suspicions they had, caused them to have us pull off to the side and go into the office for some further interrogation. So a very friendly Canadian patrolman asked us a bunch of questions, punched us into their system, and then went and searched the car for about ten minutes. Then he gave us directions to our hotel and sent us on our way.

Thursday we spent pretty much all day exploring the various districts in downtown Vancouver on foot. We hit a bunch of different cafes and malls. We got another lucky timing break when we went back to the car around 5 pm to get some water and asked the attendant when they closed, to which he replied that the gates close at 6 pm, which we hadn’t noticed, so we narrowly escaped having our car trapped overnight. Andrew remarked that overall Vancouver does have a very NYC feel to it, with just a touch softer edge. It has similar density and layout. The Chinatown district is pretty big and there are several large asian communities. We also walked through numerous blocks that were really sketchy and had lots of sketchy looking folks standing around on the sidewalk. In the evening we made our way to the quite nice Granville Island neighborhood and had a very yummy dinner of some crab cakes and pot stickers at The Sandbar restaurant. Then we watched the Ultimate Improv Championship at Vancouver Theatre Sports League.

Today we ate some Vietnamese back in Chinatown (ish) before driving up to Cypress Provincial Park, intending to go for a hike. However, after some napping and then driving further into the park our elevation put us above the snow line so hiking was not so good. We considered doing the Capilano Suspension Bridge, when we thought it was just a bridge, but it turned out to be an expensive theme park experience, so we bagged it. Instead, we walked the Varley Trail in Lynn Canyon Park a bit before another drive into the city, eventually settling on Subeez, which was pretty good, not amazing.

The rest of the photos are here.

Saturday we drove through Idaho to Boise. We stopped and met up with a friend I had made when I lived in Boise last Spring. We had a nice dinner in downtown Boise. We were considering motoring on a bit further, but we were both pretty sleepy by then so we grabbed a motel for the night and headed on in the morning. Sunday we ate breakfast in Baker City, Oregon and then drove along the Columbia River Gorge to Portland, arriving about 3:00 pm.

First order of business was putting some air into Bernie’s visitor bikes and then getting some much-anticipated bubble tea at Fat Straw. We cruised around the Hawthorne neighborhood a bit, stopping at The Dollar Scholar and then picked up some food for dinner. We had Buffalo style tempeh using Bernie’s recipe, along with some millet and khale and coconut ice cream for dessert. Yum.

Monday Bernie and Andrew were both working so I went again to Fat Straw to read in the morning then took a nice yoga class at Yoga Union. Andrew and I got some yummie but huge burritos at Los Gorditos taco cart for lunch then biked down around Ladd’s Addition, down to Oak Bottom Wildlife Refuge, and over the Steel Bridge to look at the cherry blossoms. We met up with a bunch of Bernie’s crew and had dinner at Hot Lips Pizza. Afterward we rode around a bit and made our way to the esplinade to chat and hang out under the cherry blossoms.

Today Andrew and I went to an introductory Vinyasa 101 class followed by lunch at Paradox Cafe. After a brief rest we drove out to Multnomah Falls and hiked up to the top. It was a fairly amusing crowd on the paved but steep pathway to the top. There were ample tourists, pregnant women, couples with infants, couples pushing toddlers in strollers, various PDX hipster urban types, some guy wearing a weight vest and ankle weights, and overweight people huffing their way up.

Tonight we biked to Dot’s Cafe in the Clinton District for a very tasty meal. Pictures so far are here.

Today we embarked on a road trip. We left Boulder at 5:30 and headed up 25 into Wyoming then east on 80. We got hit with some snow which was at times pretty bad and lots of wind. The ride was fun though with some good conversation and music. We pulled into Elk Mountain, Wyoming – population 192 for dinner. The vibe at the Elk Mountain Trading Post/Cafe was nice. They had a fish tank with especially clean glass, one pool table, and pretty decent food. The waitress (who also does the local weather announcements) says we can expect about ten inches of snow. I’m hoping it won’t be that bad, but we’ll see. We ventured another 42 miles to Rawlings, where we are holed up for the night. Hopefully we’ll have a full day of top speed driving tomorrow, but the weather will probably slow us down.